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Yoxall, Nicola Jayne (2026) Agroecological transitions: how farmers' relationships with nature shape farming systems. PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire. doi:10.46289/BLRP8628
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Abstract
Agroecological transition is increasingly promoted as a pathway towards more sustainable and resilient agri-food systems. However, dominant approaches often frame transition as the adoption of technical practices, giving limited attention to how farmers themselves understand or enact agroecological change within the social, economic and institutional realities of farming. This thesis addresses this gap by examining how UK farmers make sense of agroecological transition, with particular attention to the role of nature connectedness in shaping values, decision-making, and pathways of change. The research combines systems thinking, farming ontologies and more-than-human theory to develop a place and system sensitive analysis of agroecological transition. It draws empirically on a multi-sited qualitative study involving farmers across a range of farm systems in the UK. Methods included walking interviews conducted on farms and extended follow-up dialogue via WhatsApp. This approach enabled in-depth exploration of farmers’ lived experiences, place-based knowledge and evolving relationships with land, animals and ecological processes. The findings demonstrate that agroecological transition is best understood as a process of system transformation rather than the uptake of discrete practices. Processes of rethinking, reconnecting and restructuring were found to be deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Nature connectedness emerged not as an abstract environmental attitude, but as an embodied, relational form of knowing developed through everyday encounters with soil, plants, animals and landscapes. These relationships shaped farmers’ motivations, identities and ethical orientations, influencing land management decisions and engagement with ecological practices. A central contribution of the thesis lies in its analysis of the relationship between nature connectedness and economic sustainability. Rather than following financial security, nature connection actively reshaped what farmers understood to be economically rational. Ecological observation altered perceptions of risk, cost, and success, leading to business models oriented towards reduced input dependency, greater resilience, and long-term viability. Ecological practices were therefore understood as foundational to economic sustainability. The thesis also highlights structural constraints on transition, including tenancy arrangements, policy volatility, and market pressures, alongside the enabling role of social learning networks. It concludes that agroecological transition should be understood as a living systems transformation in which economic reasoning, knowledge systems, and farming practices are reconfigured through ongoing relationships between farmers and the more-than-human world.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | |||||||||
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| Subjects: | S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) > S589.7 Agricultural ecology (General) | |||||||||
| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Arts, Culture and Environment | |||||||||
| Depositing User: | Rhiannon Goodland | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 11 Sep 2026 08:51 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 11 Sep 2026 08:51 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/16515 |
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