Trust, Risk, and Dissonance: Prairie Agriculture and Canada’s Environmental Farm Plan

Abstract

In the wake of combined economic and ecological pressure, Prairie farmers and the Canadian ministries responsible for agriculture are pressed to instigate sustainable agricultural development. However, Canada’s central agri-environmental program, the Environmental Farm Planning program (EFP), faces low uptake in the Prairie region. In this thesis, I explore the nature of the dissonance between the EFP and Prairie farmers to understand why participation is so low, the issues embedded in the EFP, and how to develop better agri-environmental policy for the Prairie region. I employ multiple methods, including survey, discourse, and institutional analyses, to make sense of the dissonance. Survey analysis is used to explore the social psychology of risk and characterize participant’s knowledge, risk perceptions, and trust regarding environmental action. Next, I employ discourse analysis to examine taken-for-granted notions embedded in how interviewees articulate their relationship to themselves, society, the environment, and the state. Finally, I utilize an institutional analysis to look at the mechanisms and values built into the EFP and the Prairie context and theorize how these institutional factors affect the EFP dissonance. Using the process of triangulation, I mix my methods to conclude that risk perceptions, economic constraints, and governmental trust are at the core of the EFP dissonance.