From values to actions in agriculture: A web of actors shape Norwegian farmers' enactment of relational values

Abstract

A sustainable transition in the agri‐food system holds society‐wide implications. Farmers play central roles in responding to climate change, environmental degradation and sustainable food production. Still, factors underlying how farmers make decisions and manage their farms are often marginalised in efforts to develop policies to tackle these issues. The concept of relational values, defined as preferences, principles and virtues based on human–nature relationships, recently emerged to expand understandings of environmental decision‐making in general and that of farmers specifically. As agricultural landscapes are dynamic and characterised by the interaction of various actors with diverse values and interests, how these interactions influence farmers' decisions remains underexplored. This paper engages with these issues by using qualitative data on Norwegian horticultural farmers' motivations, opportunities and challenges in farming. We find that their relational values (a) are influential in shaping farmers' decisions about farm management and (b) are continually unfolding and embedded within a web of other actors, including grocers, retailers, consumers, farm advisors and policymakers, which shapes farmers' enactment of their relational values. In the context of agriculture, this research underlines the utility of an in‐depth understanding of relational values as embedded in wider social systems to enrich analyses of farmer decision‐making. How farmers' relational values are shaped and realised through interactions with other actors holds important implications for policy and programming to navigate tensions between different interests and actors for sustainable and long‐term change. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.