By Joern Fischer

A little bit earlier this year, Kate Sherren, Ioan Fazey and I published an empirical study on how different groups of farmers were trying to adapt to climate change. The paper was based on the technique of photo-elicitation — in this method, individuals are asked to take photos, and then they are interviewed about why they took certain photos and what was important to them in those photos.

In our case, farmers were asked to take photos of things in their landscape that were significant to them. Kate had interviewed two types of graziers — some practicing “holistic management” and some grazing the land conventionally. Holistic management is a controversial way of managing grazing systems; at its core is a kind of ‘systems thinking’. Its origins are in southern Africa and in the United States of America. Some people think holistic management is a complete…