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Agricultural Sustainability
Ecological & Psycho-social Foundations Talk - 2022
Enabling meaningful change: Ecological and Psycho-social Foundations for Agricultural Sustainability.
2022 Fenner Conference: MAKING AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE SUSTAINABLE.
17 & 18 March 2022 – Shine Dome, Canberra.
Stuart's video talk at 2022 Fenner Conference
Download notes from lecture: Deepening Sustainability: Change from Within – Stuart B Hill
Ecological and Psycho-social Foundations for Agricultural Sustainability
I consider that focusing on the following three areas of ‘key enablers’ will help agriculture to become significantly more ecologically sustainable; & able to support equitable wellbeing, meaningful work & healthy (& aesthetic) landscapes & their biota.
- Inclusion of psycho-social understandings & actions in all initiatives;
- Redesign of all systems, in the service of ecologically sustainable & humane values; &
- Developing pathways to longer-term whole system change from doable, contextually-relevant, individual & collaborative initiatives.
This will require those involved in sustainable change to develop and improve their competencies in:
- Effective communication, based on relational psychology & artistic creativity;
- Design/redesign and management of agroecosystems, based on agroecosystem science, & its relationships within whole systems; &
- Cultural change for enabling progressive system transformation (our psycho-social evolution), based on social psychology & wisdom.
The challenge I face is communicating the importance of this approach to change, and working with others to implement initiatives within our fields of practice.
I will use stories from my 50+years of doing what I am advocating to support and illustrate the nature of this approach; also to explain how I came to develop this understanding.
This has been enabled by my having been mentored since the 1960s by leaders in related fields, and colleagues and students, to whom I will for ever be grateful.
