Envisioning prairie agroecology: Farmer visual constructions of place-based ecological agriculture in Canada

Pictures and videos add epistemological layers to the coproduction of agroecological knowledge. As a conduit for “diálogos de saberes” (Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2014), visual methodologies, or research using cameras and images, enable collaboration between farmers, other land-based knowledge holders, and academic researchers. Through photography and videography, agroecologists can engage in a horizontal politics of knowledge as coresearchers, visually capturing, sharing, and discussing their understandings and experiences of agroecosystems, agricultural practices, and the challenges faced in advancing agroecological movement goals. Audio-visual media, infused with and expanded by local and place-based reflections from unique standpoints, valorizes farmers’ expertise in a way that words alone cannot. As imagery intertwines with storytelling and reflection and in dialogues with other ways of knowing, a rich tapestry emerges that transcends disciplinary boundaries, language barriers, and even space and time. Visual agroecologies, therefore, offer a tool kit for learning about and managing agricultural and environmental challenges. And the problems facing food systems today demand engaging with all tools at our disposal.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC, 2018) report, Global Warming of 1.5°C, called in unequivocal terms for “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” A significant contributor to global greenhouse gases (GHGs) is agriculture and related land-use practices (IPCC, 2019) pointing to the need for a transformation in how we produce food. One of the proposals put forward at the international level is agroecology (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2018a; FAO, 2018b), an approach to ecological agriculture and food systems that respects natural ecosystems, supports dignified livelihoods, and values diverse cultures and local knowledges, thus confronting the industrial model and transforming the way we produce and consume food (Nyéléni, 2015). Farm scale transitions to agroecological practices include reducing or eliminating agrochemical and other high-energy inputs and implementing practices that conserve soil, water, and nutrients while protecting biodiversity and rebuilding relationships with ecosystems (Gliessman, 1995; Wezel et al., 2014; Pimbert, 2015).

However, agroecology is a relatively new concept in Canada (Isaac et al., 2018; Gliessman, 2019; Dale, 2020; Laforge et al., 2021b), with Canadian farmers often conflating it with small-scale, mixed vegetable market gardens or organic agriculture. Although agroecology is meant to extend “beyond organic” (Gliessman, 2013), there is still debate concerning the definition and applicability of agroecology for the different farm types and scales across Canada’s diverse agricultural landscapes (Isaac et al., 2018). This applies in the Canadian Prairies, where conventional, large-scale industrial agriculture is dominant and “short-term productivity and economic efficiency are emphasized” (Martens et al., 2015). Specifically, a knowledge gap remains in terms of what agroecology looks like on the Canadian Prairies, which, along with the Arctic and northern British Columbia, is one of the three fastest-warming regions in Canada (Bush and Lemmen, 2019).

Given the potential of agroecology in the context of the deepening climate crisis, and its conspicuous absence as a recognizable farming system in this region, our research set out to trace a portrait of prairie agroecology through engagement with nonconventional farmers. Our research addresses the following questions: How do nonconventional farmers in the Canadian Prairies define agroecology, and what role do they see it playing in the face of the climate crisis? This article engages these questions through photovoice and interviews with farmers over the course of the 2021 growing season and in consultation with the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Canada, a member-based organization and one of the country’s main advocates of agroecology and food sovereignty (Desmarais and Wittman, 2014). Our analysis identified key unresolved issues confronting the advancement of prairie agroecology related to farm size and scale, community relationships, and settler colonialism.

Agroecology is in a constant state of social movement and academic definitional evolution. It refers to a social movement, a way of knowing, and a set of farming practices (Wezel et al., 2009), all oriented at building ecologically based and socially just food systems. Grounded in smallholder, peasant, and Indigenous “theoretical, technical, and political constructions” (Nyéléni, 2015, p. 1), its definition has evolved from the “ecology of food systems” (Francis et al., 2003) and a way of building relationship-based food systems (Gliessman, 2007) toward an alternative approach to transform the dominant industrial agriculture and food model (Valenzuela, 2016).

As a movement, agroecology is expressed in local horizontal knowledge networks (Huambachano et al., 2022) and across borders via grassroots actors. On the global stage, the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) advocates for agroecology in response to the interlinked crises driven by neoliberalism, climate change, and industrial food production (Rosset et al., 2011; Altieri and Nicholls, 2012; Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013; Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2013; La Via Campesina, 2017). The global food sovereignty movement, which includes LVC and other national and transnational actors, conceptualizes agroecology as central to food sovereignty and is working to keep agroecology from being co-opted and institutionalized by powerful institutions and agribusiness corporations (Giraldo and Rosset, 2018). In doing so, this movement has developed autonomous grassroots strategies to bring diverse knowledges into equitable conversation, and to embrace ecological production practices, gender and racial equity, and social justice rooted in community and territorial struggles (Nyéléni, 2015). Agroecology is both a tool and a way of knowing, connecting farms and farmers in the spirit of care for communities and ecological systems. For example, within and between LVC member organizations, agroecological practices and theory are horizontally shared in the form of on-farm trainings, popular communication materials, and regional and international assemblies.

Agroecological practices are place-based as they are defined in relation to their geographical, landscape, ecological, and cultural contexts. They consist of principles that translate into context-specific farm management approaches and techniques (Wezel et al., 2014). For example, a principle of agroecology is to enhance biodiversity; to put this principle into practice, agroecological farmers may plant diverse crops together, avoid chemical inputs, and build habitat for beneficial wildlife (Kremen et al., 2012; Kremen and Merenlender, 2018). These practices can reduce reliance on expensive inputs, diversify income streams, and offer resilience to extreme weather events. Furthermore, an emerging literature engages with the climate aspects of agroecology (Bezner-Kerr et al., 2019b; Debray et al., 2019; Feitosa and Yamaoka, 2020; How et al., 2020; Snapp et al., 2021). On the one hand, agroecological farms can offer climate mitigation benefits in the form of carbon sequestration and reductions in harmful emissions (Matocha et al., 2012; Altieri and Nicholls, 2013). Owing to its social underpinnings, agroecology may also help farmers adapt to climate change by increasing on-farm diversity and providing social support via networks between farmers, consumers, and activists (Altieri and Nicholls, 2013; Altieri et al., 2015). Both agroecological practices and movements have an underlying goal to “cool the planet and adapt to climate change” (Nyéléni, 2015, p. 4), embedded in an understanding that agricultural communities are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. As industrial agriculture production emits significant amounts of three primary GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) (Lin, 2011), the proponents of agroecology argue for the transformation of dominant monoculture production systems (Altieri et al., 2015).

Although many agricultural approaches to the climate crisis are hotly debated, agroecology represents a model built on “solidarity with and among affected communities” (La Via Campesina, 2018), with emphasis on movement building and political struggle alongside agricultural production practices to ensure that farmers and peasants themselves drive knowledge production and dissemination. This attention to the social, political, and productive removes agricultural practices from a vacuum of technical knowledge: Farming practices exist within the broader struggles for food systems transformation.

Parallel to the growing global demands for “climate justice” and “agrarian climate justice” (Borras and Franco, 2018) among transnational environmental movements, agroecology is also starting to confront the complexities at the intersection of sustainable food systems and social equity. This has driven interest in the more transformative and critical aspects of agroecology. Giraldo and Rosset (2022) refer to these as principles of “emancipatory agroecologies,” which include “depatriarchalizing and decolonizing” and fighting “for land and the defense of territory.” Montenegro de Wit (2021), proposing the term “abolitionist agroecology,” applies lessons from historical struggles to abolish slavery and contemporary struggles to abolish the carceral state to the possibilities of transformative social and ecological change in the food system. This growing concern with the social dimensions of agroecology as transformative suggests that, in the words of Bezner-Kerr (2020), “without addressing gender and other social inequities, and developing new forms of organization that address injustice, agroecology is simply an environmentally-friendly way of farming.”

Agroecological struggles are social struggles. Agroecology has gendered (Bezner-Kerr et al., 2019a) and racialized (Bezner-Kerr et al., 2022) dimensions. Statements such as “without feminism, there can be no agroecology” or “with racism, there can be no agroecology” circulate among proponents of agroecology today (James and Bowness, 2021). And in settler colonial contexts, agroecological movements are grappling with how to engage socially just agroecology on colonized lands by building ethical settler-Indigenous relations based in solidarity and responsibility (Wittman and James, 2022; Bowness and Wittman, 2023).

Canada’s conventional export-oriented agricultural system is at the heart of persistent crises in Canadian food systems. The number of farms continues to decline, farmland prices are rising, farm consolidation and land inequality are increasing, the farm population is aging while young and new farmers face enormous barriers to entering the sector, and the farm debt load is the highest ever on record (Qualman et al., 2018; Qualman, 2019). Meanwhile, climate change is leading to the increased frequency of drought, flooding, and extreme weather events across the country, putting additional pressure on farmers’ already precarious profit margins (Challinor et al., 2017). While Canada’s dominant agriculture and food system was built upon settler colonialism and systemic oppression of Indigenous peoples, its violent legacy is still playing out today (Ray et al., 2019; Dale, 2020; Beingessner, 2021; Robin et al., 2021; Sommerville, 2021; Robin et al., 2022).

The Prairies—which includes the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta—is where over 70% of Canada’s agricultural land is situated (Connell et al., 2016) and is known as the country’s breadbasket, mainly producing grains, oilseeds, and pulses for export. Since the region’s agriculture sector is deeply integrated into the global food system, farmer livelihoods are at the mercy of global markets, political turmoil, and trade wars, and consequently, they are also persistently dependent on farm support programs.

The neoliberal restructuring of Canadian agriculture since the mid-1980s has exacerbated the decades-long policy trend leading to farm consolidation and increasing production initially promoted by the Federal Government of Canada’s 1969 Task Force on Agriculture. A recent analysis of Statistics Canada Census data for the region demonstrates that from 1986 to 2016, “farms with more than 5,000 acres have increased the amount of land they operate from 11% to 37% of the total land farmed [while] those with fewer than 1,000 acres have seen their share of land declined from 32% to 13%. In Saskatchewan, farms larger than 3,000 acres have increased their share of farmland from 17% in 1986 to nearly 60%” (Qualman, 2019, p. 11). Fewer farms operate more extensive tracts of farmland, thus effectively concentrating not only land but farm revenue and net income in the hands of a declining number of farmers (Qualman, 2019). These trends along with the financialization of farmland are leading to growing unease among prairie farmers who are voicing concern about investor ownership of farmland, the changing structure of the family farm, and the resulting negative socioenvironmental impacts on rural communities and the environment (Aske, 2022; Magnan et al., 2022; Magnan et al., 2023). The predominantly oilseed and grain farms largely require heavy, diesel-powered machinery and intensive fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide application to reach target yields, all of which contribute to Canada’s GHG emissions (Bezner-Kerr et al., 2019a; see also Desjardins et al., 2020). At the same time, the climate crisis is beginning to hit the Prairies hard: Severe drought is already increasingly prevalent, daytime and nighttime temperatures are projected to increase by a median of 6.5°C by 2081–2100 under a high emissions scenario (Zhang et al., 2019), and longer grower seasons are expected (Laforge et al., 2021a). This fossil-fuel-driven, high-input, high-production system is unsustainable.

A growing number of farmers in the Prairies are working to “disrupt and develop diverse pathways of resistance to these challenges” through agroecology (Isaac et al., 2018), yet critical challenges stand in the way of widespread adoption. In a place where decades of yield maximization on increasingly larger production units have brought farmers to a tipping point on many fronts, the thought of integrating an agroecological approach may be daunting. In response, some farmers are adopting more ecologically sound farming practices and terms such as “organic” are becoming more common, while “regenerative,” “biodynamic,” and “permaculture” systems remain marginal in the farmer lexicon. Yet unlike some of these other nonconventional approaches to production, agroecology extends beyond farming practices to encompass political and social dimensions of the food system.

Emerging alongside the food sovereignty movements in Canada (Desmarais and Wittman, 2014), agroecology has been framed as a “reaction to the environmental degradation caused by a productivist form of agriculture” (Isaac et al., 2018). According to these authors, agroecology in Canada has no common definition and it is largely being popularized by nonstate actors and initiatives with minimal supportive government policy. As in other countries, agroecology faces the risk of being co-opted as referring only to a set of farming practices rather than also being part of a broader movement for food system transformation. Some argue that the expansion of agroecology in Canada requires embracing the politics of food sovereignty, building stronger solidarity networks among farmers and their allies, and realizing Indigenous food sovereignty (Isaac et al., 2018; Laforge et al., 2021b).

Another question raised in the agroecology literature concerns the relationship between agroecology and farm size and scale. The concept of scale¹ is a key empirical question (Dalgaard et al., 2003; Giménez Cacho et al., 2018). Around the world, those experimenting with agroecological farming systems face numerous cultural, economic, and political challenges (Lin, 2011). Empirical studies examining opportunities and barriers for agroecological transitions are needed across contexts, including in the Canadian Prairies, where conventional agriculture is dominant, highly carbon intensive (Qualman, 2019), and increasingly susceptible to climate change (Kulshreshtha, 2019).

Agroecology not only refers to on-farm practices but also approaches to knowledge creation (Wezel et al., 2009; Vandermeer and Perfecto, 2012; Levidow et al., 2014; Isaac et al., 2018). As such, this project’s methodology draws inspiration from agroecology as: transdisciplinary, in that it engages across academic disciplines and is fundamentally community-engaged; participatory, in that the research participants shape the research agenda and its outputs; and action-oriented, in that it is geared toward enhancing agroecological transitions and the transformation of the food system (Méndez et al., 2015). These principles are evident in the wider food sovereignty movement (where much agroecological research is embedded), which draws on horizontal farmer-to-farmer pedagogy and transmission of local agricultural and ecological knowledges (Rosset et al., 2011). This approach also works through networks across different knowledge systems and ideologies in what has been called the “diálogo de saberes” or the exchange of knowledges (Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2014). Constant throughout is a prioritization of farmer and food provider knowledge and experience as crucial to understanding agroecological transition pathways.

Our main objective for this study was to capture a picture of prefigurative agroecology in the Prairies through nonconventional farmers’ reflections on their farming context, practices, and philosophies, using visual social science research methods (Banks, 2001; Spencer, 2010; Gubrium and Harper, 2016). Visual social scientists use videography and photography as part of a research method and knowledge mobilization tool (Leavy and Holm, 2014; Bates, 2015; Harris, 2016; Langmann and Pick, 2017). This project was designed in consultation with the NFU and combines academic, farming, and filmmaking expertise to produce research focused on the problems of joint interest.

For this project, we used three main visual data collection methods: photovoice, visual elicitation interviews, and participatory video. Photovoice is a method that involves participant photography and reflection (Beilin, 2006; Chilton et al., 2010; Novak, 2010; Sutton-Brown, 2015). Participants are given an orienting question or topic and then take pictures that inform their reflections. This methodology generates both visual data and textual/verbal data. This allowed farmers to: (A) contribute visual illustrations of the answers given in the interviews (which informed the videomaking aspect of the project) and (B) participate during the busy harvest (when arranging interviews would be impossible). We then deepened and validated the analysis of the photovoice phase of the research during photo elicitation follow-up interviews (Cooper and Yarbrough, 2010; Harper, 2010). Finally, the main themes representing key issues confronting the future of agroecology on the Prairies are mobilized through participatory videos, a process whereby the research participants play an active role in the creation of audio-visual media (Blazek and Hraňová, 2012).

Starting with targeted invitations through the NFU and our research team’s extended networks of farming contacts, we sought farmers in the three prairie provinces who self-identified as nonconventional (i.e., organic, holistic management, regenerative, permaculture, biodynamic, or agroecological) to participate in the photovoice project over the course of the 2021 growing season (April–October). We also sent invitations to participate through online message boards of open social media groups and to publicly available email addresses associated with prairie farm organizations. For those who expressed interest, we hosted an online farm photography and digital storytelling workshop in April 2021, and farmers were provided with the workshop host’s contact information who offered to help with photography-related questions over the summer.

Given field research logistics challenges related to COVID-19, all communication with farmers at this stage was remote via videoconferencing, email, instant messaging, or phone. We asked that the descriptive part of the reflections address the following elements: (1) why you took the photo, (2) how it captures your regenerative/agroecological/nonconventional farming practices, and (3) if it can tell us anything about climate change adaptation, mitigation, or impacts on your farm.

In total, 19 farmers participated in the study: 5 from Alberta, 3 from Saskatchewan, and 11 from Manitoba. Farmers submitted their photovoice reflections containing one or more photos with some descriptive text or audio recording electronically between May and October. Over the course of the growing season, they contributed 267 reflections, including 486 photos. Farm sizes varied among the participants.

The analysis of the photovoice reflections started with an open coding pass through the data set to identify the most prevalent themes, which were grouped into two main categories of shared experiences that painted a picture of agroecology and climate change from participants’ perspectives: reflections about their farming context and practices. Roughly, these categories corresponded with the “where” (context) and the “how” (practices) of their farms. Each category was broken down into subcodes related to the content shared by the farmers. After identifying exemplary reflections from each participant in each of the two categories, we held visual elicitation follow-up interviews in February 2022 to discuss the themes and the participants’ understandings of agroecology on their farms and in the Prairies more broadly. The first part of the virtual interviews involved the photo elicitation format, where we screen-shared to look at the participant’s photos together and asked questions that encouraged them to elaborate upon their reflections as they related to the categories of farming context and practices. The second part focused on the following questions: (1) Do you see your approach to farming as agroecology? (2) How do you define agroecology? (3) What does agroecology on the Canadian Prairies mean to you and what does it look like? and (4) Do you think that agroecology can be a solution to the challenges Canadian farmers are facing, and is it a way forward for building resistance in the face of a changing climate?

The farmers related to their context in ecological, geographic, economic, and social terms. When considering their surrounding ecosystems and landscapes, they all shared concerns about the challenging climatic conditions of the 2021 season. Despite farming in different provinces and biomes, a shared experience of drought and high temperatures on their farms resulted in a unanimously stressful farming season. For instance, mixed livestock farmers at different scales expressed that “the water in our pond has never been this low” (regenerative mixed livestock and grain, 1,500 acres) and that “drought conditions have delayed the growth of pasture and we have much less available forage then we should” (61.5 acres). Similarly, other farmers expressed the stresses this heat caused for their crops, which was particularly hard: “…with drought, heat, and late-blooming crops that may crash head-long into freezing temperatures before they can provide viable seed” (certified organic grain, 160 acres). Others described the impacts of a heat wave as “frying” and letting “the weeds get ahead” of their crops (certified organic mixed grain farm incorporating regenerative practices, 1,500 acres).

This challenging ecological context was part of why the farmers felt there was an urgent need for more agroecological farming. They held a common view of the important role played by diversified agroecosystems on the landscape, which this farmer described:

In terms of the economics of prairie agroecological farming, participants recognized opportunities in agroecological farming to increase incomes in the long term, particularly through higher price-point products (e.g., grass-fed beef or certified organic grains). Many also expressed the potential to increase their profit margins through alternative market relations, such as direct, diversified marketing at the local or regional level. One mixed livestock farmer reflected on selling,

They also recognized that not all farming systems or products lend themselves to direct marketing and that selling food in this way depends on a particular consumer base and demands time. Time was a critical resource of short supply for farmers. Consistent across different farm types, the time horizon for transitioning to agroecological farming was noted as a barrier, as one pasture-based, mixed livestock farmer expressed:

Therefore, the trade-off between the long-term ecological health of the land and short-term financial necessity presents a challenge for agroecological-minded farmers. This type of longer term challenge could be overcome through government support; however, a lack of government support was cited as a major barrier. As one grain farmer noted:

One grain farmer explicitly challenged this approach and aimed to grow

Farm size was one factor that affected farmers’ willingness to take on the perceived risk of making a transition to agroecological practices, whereby smaller farmers are more easily able to adapt. As one mixed livestock farmer noted:

Similarly, participants mentioned that agroecology makes more sense financially on a small scale because it encourages “stacking enterprises” while simultaneously increasing biodiversity. Smaller farmers need to make every acre count, as this one mixed livestock farmer expressed:

Finally, farmers across all sizes and farming systems in the study expressed varying degrees to which their farms were embedded in a social and community context. This includes their consumer base, as one mixed livestock farmer noted: “Our farm wouldn’t be the success it is without the support of our customers and community” (6,000 acres). Other sources of social relations came from formal (certification-based, e.g., Sask Organics) networks, while others participated in informal groups (e.g., with farmers whom they met at a conference or workshop). For both, these communities and social networks were places to share information and ideas related to farming agroecologically on the Prairies. This was especially important for new farmers, such as this participant who said:

Others indicated that agroecological farmers need to have a community to connect with because they “have a different mindset. If you go to a conference, it’s such a different feeling in the room, a different demographic, too, but it really changed or opened our eyes” (regenerative cattle, 5,700 acres). Beyond finding connections with like-minded farmers, participants also noted how these social relations were important for support, which one mixed farmer found in the context of the organic community, describing it as

The farms included in the study ranged from large-scale grain production and pastured livestock to urban and small-scale diversified farms. The farmers engaged in a wide range of nonconventional farming practices, which they labeled as regenerative, organic, biodynamic, permaculture, and/or agroecological. Three categories of practices emerged as important to all farmers regardless of scale and production type: practices that (1) improved soil health, (2) improved systems for water storage and retention, and (3) are designed to increase biodiversity.

“Soil” was by far the most commonly recurring theme among participants, with the word itself referenced 375 times across the collected photo reflections. Many of the reflections received during the photovoice stage stressed the importance of different practices related to the shared goal of building soil health and structure.

Most of the farmers incorporated animals into the farming system. Grazing animals, poultry, and other livestock all add litter and residue to the soil, which regardless of farm size was seen to support soil health as it decomposes, increasing organic matter. One cattle farmer suggested that manure creates “soil armor” and “provides moisture retention and eventually decomposes to add to soil organic matter and ultimately soil carbon” (5,500 acres). Similarly, a mixed livestock farmer noted as their laying hens are

The farmers all expressed a need to maintain healthy soils, but farm size also dictated the degree to which they sought external inputs to this end. For those at a larger scale, fertility depended on at least some off-farm nutrient applications, making a greater case for the incorporation of grazing animals. For instance, one permaculture, regenerative, no-till mixed production (livestock, grains, and vegetables) farmer seeded clover into their fall rye fields to fix nitrogen, but they also applied fertilizers:

Related to practices for improving soil health, the farmers also prioritized practices that increase water storage and retention capacity. As this mixed livestock farmer said of their rotation practices:

Water is a primary concern for farmers, which intensified during the 2021 growing season as many prairie farmers underwent drought-like conditions for most of the season. As farmers grow accustomed to changing weather patterns, practices that capture, store, and transport rain and groundwater become increasingly important. As one grain farmer noted

The practices farmers used to increase their resilience to drought included using a dugout, described as the “lifeblood of the farm,” for berry production (76 acres), stockpiling pasture after rain and using troughs and pipelines for watering cattle (5,700 acres), and using ground cover to maintain moisture for the rare times it did rain (1,500 acres). As a grain farmer stated, “water is our limiting resource, so we do everything we can on our farm to conserve every drop of rain we receive” (6,000 acres).

Finally, a third key set of farming practices that included both passive and active actions aimed to increase biodiversity. In terms of passive actions, some farmers intentionally “spared” some of the landscape, which this regenerative cattle farmer did:

Smaller scale farmers increased the density of multifunctional perennials, such as this one farmer who used trees to increase biodiversity on their mixed farm:

Other farmers aimed to work with the diversity of plant life on their farm, such as this holistic management cattle farmer speaking of Buckbrush, which

Farmer expressions of commitments to soil building, retaining water, and encouraging biodiversity were rooted in a vision of the role of prairie farming in its ecological and social context. Despite participants identifying with different farming systems, methods, and certification standards, there was significant overlap between their reasons for farming the way they do. The most common reason that farmers gave for using nonconventional practices related to two categories of well-being: for the well-being of the land, animals, and planet, and the well-being of the farm business and their families. The former is encapsulated in this quote from a cattle farmer, who, speaking about their animals, said:

Similarly, farmers approached agroecology with the well-being of their families and the farm in mind, which one farmer described as taking a long-term perspective: “As a multigenerational family farm, teaching the next generation is imperative. […] We are not farming with short-term goals, but with the dream of our farm continuing for many more generations” (grain, 6,000 acres). However, the objective of running a sustainable farm also extended outward to supporting thriving rural communities, as demonstrated in this quote from a grain farmer with a large permaculture garden: “The goal is to grow abundance first and foremost, so us and our close community has enough. And then maybe work towards focusing on few food crops to grow well in a whole system and sell” (2,400 acres).

The reflections that farmers shared about their farming context and practices create a portrait of agroecology on the Canadian Prairies that demonstrates similarities with agroecology as it is expressed in other places. Prairie agroecology is enacted through practices that enhance soil health, water retention, and biodiversity; it is adapted to an agricultural region where conventional commodity production dominates; and it is developed through a shared vision for healthier families, communities, and surrounding ecosystems. As such, their definitions of agroecology were consistent in recognizing farming as part of something bigger than growing food; one farmer described agroecology as “agriculture with the entire ecosystem in mind, working with nature and nature’s way to be part of the system and to build up the environment you’re in rather than to destroy it” (regenerative cattle, 5,700 acres). Similarly, others referred to agroecology as using “natural cycles to ensure that we have a good balance with nature. We’re regenerating the soil, and we’re reducing harmful insects and diseases in a more natural way” (certified organic and regenerative crops, 6,000 acres).

Other participants defined agroecology in relation to other nonconventional agricultural practices, such as “regenerative” agriculture:

Since agroecology is not yet clearly defined on the Prairies, some participants admitted to being confused about the term, and saw more overlap than distinctiveness among other nonconventional approaches such as “regenerative” agriculture:

For this farmer, there is an overlap between organic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and agroecology, where organic agriculture and agroecology are more about input substitution and working in harmony with the ecosystem, and regenerative agriculture is more about “improving” the ecosystem. This lack of clarity raises questions about the utility of having another term in the list describing nonconventional approaches:

Despite these potential obstacles to arriving at a unified and coherent definition of agroecology on the Prairies, the consensus among the participants was that agroecology represents a way to address challenging climate conditions facing farmers. However, as agroecology is a place-based concept, it confronts different tensions and barriers depending on its local ecological, political, and social context. Below we discuss three tensions for prairie agroecology related to scale and farm size, community relations, and settler colonialism.

Some farmers in the study thought that agroecology could thrive at a local, small scale, such as this mixed vegetable grower:

Whether agroecological food production could be practiced on bigger farms is a key question in the literature (Giménez Cacho et al., 2018; Liebert et al., 2022). Often, agroecology is associated with smaller scale mixed farms involving diversified food production systems, which are far from the norm in the Canadian Prairies. Some farmers saw diversity as a necessary component of agroecology, which dictated the scale at which agroecology can exist:

Standing in opposition to the belief that agroecological practices are necessarily confined to small-scale farms, when asked if agroecology could exist on the Prairies on bigger farms, this mixed livestock farmer saw labor as the main limitation, which, when juxtaposed against the erosion of rural population density, presents a major tension for the future of agroecology:

This view of agroecological practices as labor-intensive is contrasted against highly mechanized industrial agriculture. For some farmers, agroecology is defined in reference to diversity and scale, or more specifically as opposed to conventional agriculture and the defining features associated with it, such as control. As one farmer put it:

Others thought that the transition to agroecology, regardless of farm size, would come by necessity, as one farmer stated:

When participants were asked whether they thought that agroecological transitions are viable in the Prairies, many had similar responses. Some claimed that many farmers experience peer pressure that stops them from investigating agroecology, and others said intersecting factors that include the necessity of a shift in mindset, lack of information, and financial risks stop people from transitioning their farming systems toward agroecology. One certified organic farmer put it like this:

The idea that agroecology could grow on the Prairies therefore depends on several considerations related to farm size and farm scale. For one, farmers thought that this would require more labor, which can refer to either larger diversified farms with more farm workers or more farms each operating at smaller scale. This view of agroecology implies a need to counter the ongoing emptying of the countryside. Agroecological transitions in the Prairies would therefore require a “scaling back” of industrial agriculture coupled with the repopulation rural communities. A common perspective among agroecological farmers was that agroecology needs more labor, and for that to happen, there needs to be more people on the landscape. However, in addition to raising the need for more labor, the perspectives among prairie farmers did not present a pathway for addressing other issues related to labor, such as the challenges for ecological farmers to offer living wages to farm workers (Weiler et al., 2016; Klassen et al., 2022) and their reliance on unpaid internships (Ekers et al., 2016). In other words, the need for more labor to meet the specific requirements of agroecological transitions on the Prairies does not necessarily ensure that the labor needed will be fair.

While the ecological, geographic, and economic context is a major factor in determining how agroecology is expressed, it is also created through historical, existing, and emerging social relationships between farmers, social movements, and networks of actors across the food system. These relationships serve several different functions, from transferring skills and learnings from farmer-to-farmer, to creating support networks by building grower–eater relations, to developing community networks for advancing proposals at different policy levels (Anderson et al., 2021).

The participants reflected on the relative lack of dense agroecological social networks and community relationships in the prairie region. As one farmer put it:

Participants also noted weak links between conventional and nonconventional farmers, although some did mention the possibility for collaboration, for instance with conventional grain farmers. As one farmer put it:

And others noted that agroecological farmers can learn from conventional farmers, as this organic farmer noted:

Participants also noted the importance of bridging gaps between consumers and farmers:

However, despite these ideas about how to build stronger agroecological relations, prairie agroecology, as expressed through the farmers in this study, is in a very nascent, or prefigurative state. This raises important questions about the potential for agroecology in regions defined by greater physical and social space between farmers, and by a growing gap between farmers of different production approaches and philosophies.

Throughout the research, there were a few mentions of the necessity of systemic change. For example, one mixed farmer highlighted:

However, it is challenging for farmers to think with this long-term horizon, especially when there are such formidable challenges in the near and medium terms. One such key concern for several farmers was the future of the farm, or the question of succession. As mentioned above, the persistent decline of rural populations and towns in the Prairies is putting the future of family farming and rural ways of life in question. The average farmer’s age in Canada is 56 (Statistics Canada, 2022), and so many farmers were concerned about the future of their farms.

While several participants noted that the industrial and export-oriented agriculture of the Prairies is entrenched and difficult to change, some aspects of this structure were of greater concern than others. As one farmer put it:

This was one of the few times when the farmers interviewed recognized Canada’s settler colonial history. This silence is perhaps not that surprising, given that notably absent from the mainstream history of prairie agricultural development are discussions of the land management, food provisioning, and agriculture that had been practiced in the region by Indigenous communities before colonization (Carter, 1999; Laforge et al., 2021a). Treaties signed between 1870 and 1920 enclosed Indigenous lands for intensive wheat production using European farming practices. In many ways, agriculture is best understood as a colonial structure that played a major role in “clearing the plains” (Daschuk, 2013), and it continues to maintain colonial property relations in Canada today (Beingessner, 2021). Recognizing the colonial history of farming implicates farmers in dispossession. This living history juxtaposed with farmer reflections on climate change as an urgent crisis points to an uneasy and potentially irreconcilable tension between settler and Indigenous futurity. As Indigenous scholars and leaders have noted, scientific, policy, and social movement claims that we are currently living in a “state of emergency” erases Indigenous experiences of colonization as an existential threat that has been ongoing since European contact (Whyte, 2018).

This tension is obscured in the ambiguous language used by the farmer’s quote above—Who are those “certain types of people”? Who is excluded? While prairie agroecology as practiced by settlers’ conflicts with some demands for “land back” (Yellowhead Institute, 2019), a small subset of research participants indicated that building relationships grounded in trust as a first step toward reconciliation is one of the emerging issues for agroecology. Our engagement with challenges confronting the potential futures of prairie agroecology, and pathways to a just agroecological transition on the Prairies, point to the necessity of building ethical relationships across lines of social difference and inviting difficult conversations about the contemporary responsibilities of settler farmers to Indigenous Peoples. Such relationships will need to be personal and regionally based and be guided by “consent, trust, accountability, and reciprocity” (Whyte, 2020).

The picture of prairie agroecology emerging from the photovoice process demonstrated challenges facing agroecology as a coherent and robust collectivity in the Prairies. As a research team of settlers with both academic and lived experiences with agroecology, it was important for us to ensure our analysis of the results was validated by the farmers who took part in the study and to amplify farmer perspectives on key issues. First, we took our findings back to the participants in a focus group format, which confirmed the resonance of the main findings among the farmers. Then, this informed the planning of four videos exploring key themes in further detail with a subset of project participants. The resulting four videos were filmed in September 2022, and then were edited and then reviewed by the participants. The featured farmers paint a portrait of prairie agroecology that explored concepts through the lens of personal experience in a relatable and easy-to-understand way.

Katie and Colin McInnes live in southwestern Manitoba where they raise pastured livestock at “The Dogs Run Farm.” They are both first-generation farmers. Central to their story are themes related to stresses associated with managing a farm and the threat of burnout, and how important community relationships are to keeping their farm and family going.

Lydia Carpenter and her partner Wian Prinsloo run “Luna Field Farm” where they also have a diversified pastured livestock farm. Lydia draws a link between the scale of agriculture on the Prairies, including infrastructure such as conservation districts, and what is needed for agroecology to meaningfully contribute to the farming landscape on the Prairies. Key points include the need to bring more farmers onto the land and to provide support for succession planning.

Stacey Wiebe and Dale Maier have a mixed-operation livestock farm in central Saskatchewan called “White Owl Farms.” They farm organically and their story focuses on making space for ecosystems, which to them is hard to imagine doing at a very large scale.

Ana Fyk farms with her family on “Tripple F Farms” near Duck Mountain Provincial Park near the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Her family has Ukrainian heritage, and they farm a conventional grain operation, focusing on buckwheat. Ana will inherit the farm and is thinking about what her farming future will hold. In her video, she mentions challenges associated with being on “an island” without other like-minded farmers nearby. Key to her perspective on agroecology is the necessity for building new relationships, including potential relationships grounded in trust with local Indigenous nations who were the traditional stewards of the land.

Together, these video stories add richness to key themes identified during the photovoice process and follow-up interviews, while also communicating what agroecology looks like on the Prairies. Both Katie and Lydia noted that agroecology is happening on the Prairies, although it might go by other names. In Katie’s words:

Similarly, Lydia said:

Across all the farmer reflections, themes related to the ecological role of agriculture in the food system were important, affirming the need to work symbiotically in harmony with natural cycles, rather than through extractive and antagonistic, relationships with ecosystems. For Dale, this means leaving trees on the land, which is not something that larger farms are as able to do: “the trees help our land, […] and all the wildlife help our land and make it better.” Colin had the following to say about relationships: “community is important to agroecology […] the sharing of knowledge by producers practicing agroecology becomes extremely important and so developing these relationships and maintaining these relationships is critical.” For Ana, the importance of relationships includes not only the land but also other living beings: “Respectful relationships are an integral part of agroecology. Without respectful relationships with one another and with the land, agroecology can’t exist.”

Also, central to the stories were farmer perspectives about the structure of prairie agriculture, noting that more farmers were needed on smaller farms, with improved access to land for new farmers and better coordination for local food provision. As Lydia indicated:

Similarly, Stacey said:

The videos also demonstrate commitments to building relationships across generations and lines of social difference, including a small gesture toward the difficult but critical task of creating relations of solidarity and reciprocity with Indigenous communities, which Ana invited:

Prairie agroecology is emerging among options for navigating food system transformation. Despite the diversity in farm size and production type among farmers involved in this study, several core themes emerged about prairie agroecology in terms of its relationship to the local context, including a series of ecological farming practices to enhance water management, soil health, biodiversity, and well-being. However, questions remain regarding the potential for the practice of agroecology on large-scale farms, with some expressing more optimism than others. Concerns were raised about the labor demands inherent in agroecology and doubts as to whether large-scale landscapes can ever integrate the fine-tuned attention, care, and diversity required by agroecology. Addressing these concerns would require scaling back industrial large-scale agriculture and repopulating the countryside. Furthermore, as with other ongoing discussions of the theory and practice of agroecology within social movements and reflected in the literature on agroecology in the Global North, many questions remain around the social dimensions of agroecology. As farmers in our study suggest, a just agroecological transition (Ruder et al., 2022) on the Prairies would challenge the corporate food regime and provide equitable livelihoods to food providers working with the land in ways that foster regenerative ecological and social relationships. Over the longer term, this would both require and enable transformations in rural demographics, farming practices, agricultural policies, infrastructure, community networks, and property relations.

Given how entrenched conventional agriculture is in this region, what agroecological possibilities exist in the short and medium term? As a distinct approach to ecological agriculture in a region dominated by large industrial farms, agroecology on the Canadian Prairies does share similarities with other agroecologies in other settler colonial contexts which shed some light on possible paths forward. For instance, Iles (2021) examines the limited potential for agroecological transitions in Australia. Using the multilevel perspective from sustainability transition studies (Geels, 2002), Iles shows that, despite agroecological farmers growing in prevalence as “niches” throughout the country, lock-ins of industrial and export-oriented agriculture make it unlikely to see food systems-wide transitions in line with agroecology. Similar to the lack of dense social networks in the Canadian context, Iles points to social movements as critical to agroecological transitions in Australia and uses the term “massification” to describe a necessary condition for systems-scale transitions, where agroecology movements grow to reach a critical mass to force change onto the Australian agri-food political agenda. In a different context, Price and colleagues (2022) examine the prospects for agroecology in Canadian north, noting that while climate change makes agroecological expansion possible in the region, unless it is developed under Indigenous leadership as an expression of Indigenous sovereignty, it risks reproducing agricultures colonial legacies of violence and dispossession common to both the Australian and Canadian Prairie contexts.

Our research reveals that for agroecology to flourish, more farmers and stewards are needed on the land. Farmers also need to be supported in experimenting with agroecological practices at various scales, both by peer networks and government policy. Furthermore, for farmers who are interested, without being prescriptive, support is needed to explore the ways of creating new social relationships, including relations with local Indigenous nations. Here, the emergence of the land treaty sharing network based in Saskatchewan holds promise and provides an emerging and modest example of possible different ways of thinking, being, and living in the region (Beingessner, 2022; see also the Treaty Land Sharing Network, n.d.). The future of agroecology on the Prairies, given its conceptual commitment to not only sustainable but also just food systems, will therefore depend on how the next generation of farmers and food providers in this region grapple with these challenging tensions, including the possibilities of interrupting colonialism as a key aspect of a just transition for food systems.

No data sets were generated through this research. Ethics approval for this project was obtained through the University of Manitoba’s Research Ethics Board. The videos produced as part of this research can be accessed here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6jF_DoaUO-nWNhLjGhQS0p4s3eifcAt9&si=2WC4SzHvLB0qbWxH.

Thank you to the many people who have contributed to this article in various ways. First and foremost, to the farmers who participated in the study, including those who generously welcomed the research team onto their farms to film the videos (Stacey Wiebe, Dale Maier, Katie and Colin McInnes, Lydia Carpenter, and Anastasia Fyk). Thanks also to Omar Lucman for field support during the filming process and for editing the videos and to Ben Marans for hosting the farmer visual storytelling photography workshop. We also want to thank Kirsten Benot for providing research assistance and those who offered feedback on the funding proposal which supported this research (Elizabeth Comack, Hannah Wittman, Dana James, Elyssa Warkentin, Rob Hoppa, Ian Mauro, and Laura Funk). And thank you to Darrin Qualman and the National Farmers Union of Canada for their support in planning and connecting with participants. We are grateful for the helpful feedback from the reviewers and Elementa Sustainability Transitions Editor-in-Chief Alastair Iles, and for the efforts of the guest editors who put together the “Ways of Knowing and Being for Agroecology Transitions” Special Feature, especially Colin Anderson for his helpful feedback.

This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada Insight Development Grant “Transitioning to Agroecology in the Canadian Prairies: A Research and Visual Methods Pilot Project” [430-2020-00598], the Canada Research Chairs (950-231871), and the University of Manitoba. Thanks also to the Global Alliance for the Future of Food for making this article open-access.

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

• Contributed to conception and design as well as securing the research funding: EB, AAD.

• Supervised the project and administered the funding: AAD.

• Led the research: EB.

• Contributed to acquisition of data: EB, JM.

• Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: EB, JM, SO.

• Drafted and/or revised the article: EB, JM, AAD, SO.

• Approved the submitted version for publication: EB, JM, AAD, SO.

How to cite this article: Bowness, E, MacInnis, J, Desmarais, AA, Oke, S. 2024. Envisioning prairie agroecology: Farmer visual constructions of place-based ecological agriculture in Canada. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 12(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2023.00054

Domain Editor-in-Chief: Alastair Iles, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Knowledge Domain: Sustainability Transitions

Part of an Elementa Special Feature: Ways of Knowing and Being for Agroecology Transitions