capture the interviewees’ thought processes, the frame
of reference, and the feelings about an incident or set of
incidents which have meaning for the respondent (cf.
[16]). According to [17] it is the way people constitute
their reality and the way they view the world which
shapes their future actions. To understand people’s
actions it is important to map the way they think. Listening
to the farmers talking about their problems,
some of them spent a lot of the interview explaining
how they worked to prevent problems from arising.
Through detailed analyses (attributional coding) of the
interview transcripts farmers that used proactive problem
solving techniques could be identified. Although
this method is time-consuming, a phenomenon such as
farmers’ problem solving abilities cannot be adequately
captured in a questionnaire. During the interview the
farmers talked about their farming and problem solving
with ease and appreciated being allowed to do so in
their own words. In turn, these words can be very valuable
data in agricultural and veterinary research.
The social perspective
As is evident from the managerial perspective discussed
above, the farmer clearly plays a crucial role managing
the farm. Often however, the farmer is not running the
farm alone. Thus, understanding the social context in
which the farmer operates may be of vital importance to
understand how agricultural and veterinary challenges
are handled. The social perspective is about the interactions
and relationships between those being involved in
the daily farming activities and decision making. Thus,
the social perspective includes phenomena such as communication,
information exchange, conflict and conflict
management, and team dynamics.
The social perspective is rarely used in the farming
literature up until now. None of the studies listed in
Table 1 used this approach. The absence of the social
perspective in agricultural and veterinary research may
be surprising in light of the findings in [9]. In their study
of farmers’ expectations related to dairy herd health management,
teamwork was one of the aspects that farmers
valued the most. On the other hand, maybe the lack of
research on teamwork should not be surprising as the
veterinarians in the same study believed production and
profit to be the farmers’ primary focus. Given the scarcity
of agricultural and veterinary research adopting a social
perspective, we next illustrate—by briefly reporting on a
project in progress—how the perspective may possibly
add value to the other perspectives.
In order to explore the social perspective we studied
several collaborative farming projects. In Norway it has
become quite popular for farmers to enter collaborative
farming joining their quotas, herds and farming land.
We interviewed two farmers in each joint operation, one