Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.
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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2023
Evolving Regenerative Agriculture with Safe to Learn Trials BY ANN ADAMS
I
was reading a recent book review by Maria Popova about Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success on the Brainpickings website. In this book, Dr. Dweck, a psychologist from Stanford, articulates that there are two basic mindsets that rule people’s lives and their definitions of success. People tend toward either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. In essence, someone with a fixed mindset believes that you come into this world with a certain amount of intelligence or talent once we become an adult. A person with that mindset also believes that success is measured against a certain standard and the inability to achieve that standard signifies a failure. They tend to avoid challenges or give up easily if there are obstacles.
Healthy Land, Food, & Lives INSIDE THIS ISSUE Healthy land is the foundation for healthy raising healthy animals and crops. Holistic Management is a great tool for helping people to create not only healthy land, but healthy lives and prospering businesses as can be seen in “A Holistic Approach to Marketing” on page 3 or “Holism and Health” on page 4.
In Practice a publication of Holistic Management International
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They may feel threatened by others’ successes and may not be willing to listen to other people’s constructive feedback. On the other hand, someone with a growth mindset believes that one can always expand their intelligence, wisdom, or other talents. Success is not a static concept, so if they are not able to succeed initially, they are more likely to see challenges as a potential for growth or learning rather than a failure. These people have a desire to learn so they may persist when confronted with obstacles and are focused on how they can gain mastery of a particular situation. They are more likely to see lessons they can learn from in the success of others and are more likely to listen to and learn from critical feedback. The field of psychology has shown through numerous experiments that there is great power in what you believe, both consciously and unconsciously, that influences our behavior and, ultimately, our results. Dweck’s experiments provide proof for that hypothesis and she notes: “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” I believe this is a skill we want for ourselves and those around us as we face our challenging times. One of Dweck’s experiments to discern if a child had a fixed or growth mindset was to offer a four-year-old the option of redoing an easy jigsaw puzzle or try a new harder one. The fixed mindset child would repeat the puzzle they knew versus the growth mindset one would want the new one. Her experiment suggested that from an early age, a child will show his/her predilection in this way. Dweck also used brain-wave analysis to see how people’s brains responded to feedback they received when answering difficult questions. The fixed mindset people did not “receive” information that would help them improve because if they weren’t “correct” they had “failed” and it was if they couldn’t hear it. However, the growth mindset people were taking in all information to continue to learn even if they got the answer right.
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The good news is that we can encourage more of a growth mindset approach if we encourage people with telling them they worked hard rather than just “being” smart or fast, etc. when they complete a task. When people are praised for their effort to improve, they are more likely to move toward a growth mindset approach. In fact, Dweck’s research showed that 90% of students praised for their effort will want to take on a more challenging task. And, they are more likely to persist at that task if they don’t perform as well because they understand it is about putting more effort in and not because they don’t have some innate ability, and that effort will lead to increased learning and skill.
Encouraging Regenerative & Holistic Experimentation
After reading this book review, I had a deeper understanding of how people perceive success, and it got me thinking about our focus on “safe to fail” trials. I realized that the wording of these onfarm/on-ranch experiments could potentially turn people off from performing this kind of exploration. We may believe that anyone who is practicing regenerative agriculture must have a growth mindset, but I don’t think that is true. Many people are moving to regenerative agriculture because of wanting to do the “right” thing or perhaps because they are motivated by greater profit margins or lower risk, better quality of life, or less exposure to harmful chemicals and management practices that are not family-friendly. None of those motivations immediately indicate that a regenerative agriculture producer is inherently interested in experimentation. In fact, the interest in consultants who can create a crop or grazing plan for producers would indicate that some of these producers do want the “recipe for success” to make a successful transition to regenerative agriculture. Who can blame them? Likewise, some people might assume that all holistic managers are by nature part of the “growth” mindset camp since Holistic Management is an adaptive management system CONTINUED ON PAGE 2