Starting in 2014, I will be doing interviews on how new farmers learn about alternative agriculture. This means I’ll be talking to farmers who use organic, permaculture, biodynamic, and/or holistic farm management principles and ideas. I plan to visit incubator farms where new farmers can access relatively inexpensive parcels of land to start their farm business and also talk to people who have done internships and those who have mentored new farmers. This research will also include agricultural certificates from colleges and universities, workshops, other certification programs, websites and blogs, books, and farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing. This could be a huge undertaking, so I’m limiting my study area to a comparison between Eastern Ontario and Southern Manitoba. Formally this research project is entitled “Farmer Knowledge in Alternative Agriculture: Community Learning and the Politics of Knowledge” (because academics love colons).

While not actually part of my research plan, canoes represent a slow and reflective mobility that can be seen as a metaphor for doing academic research.