WWOOFing, providing and transmitting organic knowledge and values - Research work 2017

As some of you may know ( and have participated to my survey), while I was working at the Countryside and Community Research Institute, I did a small research project about alternative farming knowledge, in order to understand how knowledge is created, enhanced and shared between people, especially in organic farming and other alternative productions (permaculture, bio-dynamic...). The title of my project is " To what extent collective learning and social interactions play a role in creating and transmission alternative farming knowledge?", and I used WWOOFing as an example to understand how this programme contributes in creating and sharing of knowledge, and spreading organic values all around the world.

You can find the results and the analysis below, and also have a look on the video of the oral presentation I have made at the CCRI last week on youtube, and check the slides on slideshare.

I would like to thank everyone who filled the survey, each response was very important and interesting. Also a big thank you to the many national WWOOF organizations who helped me to share my survey (WWOOF UK, WWOOF France, WWOOF Australia, WWOOF Canada), and to the WWOOFers and hosts I have meet in the lasts years, making my WWOOFing experiences incredible. I truly believe we can change something and play a role in saving the planet by doing WWOOFing and spreading the Organic Values around us. It gives me hope for the future!

KEEP WWOOFING

Study Report:

WWOOFing is a network connecting organic farmers who look for help on their farm, and volunteers who offer their labour in exchange of meals and accommodation. In the 70s, Sue Coppard, a secretary who lived in London, felt the need to reconnect with the farm environment as when she was a child. She initiated the concept of WWOOF, the acronym meant at the beginning Working Week-end On Organic Farm but was rapidly transform into an acronym for World-Wide Opportunities in Organic farm, as the organization expanded in several countries around the world, to reach today 100 000 WWOOFers and 15 000 host spread in more than one hundred countries. Although each country has its own national organization, the guidelines of WWOOF are similar in each country: the host farm has to be organic, the WWOOFers works a certain amount of hours per day in exchange for food and accommodation but does not receive money, the concept being non-commercial. With its peculiar aspect, WWOOFing is a hybrid concept: not really tourism, but not work either, and WWOOFers’ motivation can be compared with long-term low budget travellers (backpackers for example), wishing to experiment a different way-of-life, with local communities (Ord, 2010). Few academic studies have been conducted about WWOOFing, to understand the incentives, the aspirations and what participants receive from their engagement with to the program. For example, in a study on sustainable tourism as a means of sustaining biodiversity in Panama, the WWOOF volunteer program is seen as a “potential for volunteers to share new ideas with local farmers, and vice versa.” (Schloegel, 2007). Another study made in New Zealand concludes that the volunteer experience is distinct from the traditional commercial farm stays in that the experience includes elements of personal meaningfulness, sincerity, and opportunity to learn (McIntosh and Bonnemann, 2006). Maycok’s analysis (2008) contains the similar idea of WWOOFing being more than tourism and farm stay : “Beyond simply facilitating low budget travel or enjoyable and ecofriendly tourism, WWOOF truly does provide its volunteer with significant opportunities to grow in both cultural and agricultural knowledge...ˮ. Elisabeth Koznick, in her thesis “WWOOF, Environmentalism and Ecotopia: Alternative Social Practices between Ideal and Reality” (2013), has studied WWOOFing with a social and anthropologist point of view. Her experiences and interviews with WWOOFers and hosts shows that usually people involved in WWOOFing share the same values in term of nature, environment, food system etc : ”Despite outward differences most members – hosts, volunteers, and directors – share similar values. They have a holistic concept of nature, a positive attitude towards living in the country, keen to live a sustainable lifestyle. But there is also a mutual dislike for consumerism, materialism, industrial food and big corporations, including agro-businesses”.

“The success of the WWOOF experience depends on the mutual cooperation of hosts and WWOOFers; that is, that hosts provide their hospitality and share their knowledge, while WWOOFers provide their enthusiasm and assistance with farm duties.” McIntosh, 2009

The aim of this study is not directly to evaluate the motivation for WWOOFers and hosts to participate to the program, but to asses to what extent the program plays a role in indirect knowledge transmission and emergence of alternative farming practices.

1. Method:

An on-line survey has been shared through WWOOFing networks (Twitter, Facebook WWOOF groups), CCRI network and personal contacts, trying to collect as many responses as possible. The respondents sample is then influenced by the locality where the survey took place and the the survey was shared, explaining the higher proportions of British and French respondents. It is an exploratory survey; sampling and methods use in the survey are not suitable for generalization of the findings. The survey was divided in two distinct paths, whether the respondent was host or WWOOFer. Only one question was common to both hosts and WWOOFers: “what is, for you, the best thing about WWOOFing”. The rest of the survey will be analyzed in two parts, one for the hosts’ responses and the other one for the WWOOFers. The total number of respondents to the survey was 170, but 1852 people visited the first page of the survey and did not continue. The language barrier (survey only in English) might have discouraged some non-English speaking respondents.

2. Hosts’ survey:

The hosts’ survey had a limited diffusion, with only 22 respondents. That’s why the results are very specific and cannot be considered as general or showing a general trend. The majority of the farms’ respondents are located in the UK (36%), in Australia (23%) and in France (18%), even if all the nations were targeted . This can be explained by the share of the survey by WWOOFUK, WWOOFAustralia and WWOOFFrance social networks, whereas the survey was not shared in other national groups.

Figures 1 and 2: Farm description and location

The majority of respondents own a farm; however 27% only have a garden, where they probably grow their own food and where WWOOFers can help. The last describing question was about the length of time the respondents host WWOOFers, and the respondents’ panel is diverse, with responses from “less than one year” (23%) to “more than 10 years” (32%).

The aim of the questionnaire was to understand better the hosts’ motivation to be part of the WWOOFing network, and especially analyse how it can impact their farming practices. For 90% of the respondents, hosting WWOOFers might improve the farming knowledge (63% “yes, definitely” plus 27% “maybe”). This is even more important for farmers hosting for less than 3 years, with 100% saying that the WWOOFers might participate to improve the farmers’ knowledge. Moreover, 68% of the respondents have good memories of things they learnt thanks to the WWOOFers they hosted:

“A WWOOFer had an idea to design the polytunnel on various levels, along permaculture principles, to increase yield”

“New ways of recycling and re-using”

“Planting trees, feeding trees and laying fertilizers for fruit trees, fruit picking”

WWOOFers don’t only contribute to bring farming knowledge, but also cooking knowledge seem to be very appreciated by the hosts:

“The things we have learnt from WWOOFers are to do with food and cooking. From one WWOOFer we learnt how to cook perfect rice (!) From another WWOOFer we learnt how to dry apple rings.”

“How to make sourdough we still use almost daily when making our own bread plus other recipes ways of preserving”

According to these answers, it seems that the knowledge dimension is important for farmers hosting WWOOFers. However, when it is asked to classify from the most important to the least important reason to host, knowledge provision (“Hosting WWOOFers brings new knowledge that can improve my farming practices”) is not chosen as the main reason. Indeed, for the majority of the respondents, the first reason for hosting WWOOFers is to help them with the workload in the farm. The “knowledge” aspect arrives in average on the fourth place (figure 3).

Figure 3 : Result from the question 5 "Classify the main reasons to host WWOOFers" . This bar chart shows that the main reason for hosting wwoofers is to help with the workload in the farm, but shows that transmitting values and meeting people are also important reasons to hosts WWOOFers.

Other reasons to hosts WWOOFers have been suggested in the survey like “being part of a network”; “give young people access to the countryside, as the average age of a farmer in the UK is 59” or even “keep feeling young”.

The knowledge aspect is not seen as the main reason to host people, but it doesn’t mean that WWOOFers do not share any knowledge with their hosts, as shown earlier. The knowledge transmission from WWOOFers to farmers is then more an indirect consequence instead of a real wish from farmers to learn from their WWOOFers. Moreover, of the 22 respondents, only seven of them did WWOOFing before becoming hosts. They all agreed that what they learnt in their previous WWOOFing experience is now useful in their daily life, as farmer or hosts. The learning process and knowledge transmission is maybe more obvious from the hosts to the WWOOFers. The other part of the survey was directed only to the WWOOFers to try to evaluate how they perceive the learning process during their experiences on farm.

3. WWOOFers’ survey:

From the same survey, the WWOOFers followed a different path with specific questions for their experience. It was easier to reach WWOOFers compared to hosts, with 148 respondents. Once again, even if the respondent number is higher than for the hosts’ survey, the results are still very specific and cannot be considered as general. From this survey, we can try to understand better WWOOFers’ motivation to participate to WWOOFing, and how it impacts upon their farming knowledge. The spread of the survey all around the world was quite a success with nineteen different respondents’ nationalities. Once again, France and the UK are the most represented, but also Germany and Canada. The high number of French respondents between 20 and 24 can be explained by the use of the AgroParisTech webmail network as a way of transmission, which can impact the trend of some answers as all the students from this school study agronomy and are more likely to work in the agriculture field in the future. Latin America, Asia and Africa are underrepresented in this survey (see figure 4)

Figure 4 : Map showing the respondents' nationality. Mainly European, Australian and North American are represented. Language barrier might have had an impact on the respondents, as well as the sharing by some networks more than by others.

The majority of respondents (74.5%) had already some farming knowledge before starting the WWOOFing experience, but it is interesting to see that there are also farming novices who participate to the programme. These “beginners” with low farming knowledge before almost all agree (86%) to say WWOOFing increased their awareness about organic farming and made them change your consumer habits (figure 5 and 6).

“My experience in WWOOFing motivated a shift in my profesional and personal way of life. I have developped a bigger concern with environmental issues and I wish to take action that make sense to me.”

“Discovering environmental-friendly ways to produce food is refreshing. You become a bit more optimistic about the future and you want to support the producers and the way they think. Hens, this kind of experience might be the first step towards changing your lifestyle or it might confort your choices. Moreover, you become more aware of all the hardwork behind the production of food. And you might have a better and clearer image of agriculture in your mind.”

Figure 5: Distribution of the respondents according their farming knowledge before participating to WWOOFing. More than one quarter of the respondents say they didn’t have any farming knowledge before.

In her bachelor thesis “ Impacts through ‘WWOOFing’ on the volunteer’s personal development” (2014), Husung conducted semi-structured interviews with WWOOFers and found as well that WWOOFing increased awareness in societal and environmental values. The interviewees agree that WWOOFing made them change their food habits as now they know where the food comes from and the benefits of organic production on the environment. Her findings indicated “direct involvement with nature, resulted in a connection with nature which in its turn influenced the volunteer’s values, among others in increased environmental awareness.”

Figure 6 : Comparison of the responses at the question “Do you think doing WWOOFing increased your awareness about organic farming and made you change your consumer habits” between two types of respondents: the “novices” ones, with no farming knowledge before their WWOOFing experience, and the “knowledgeable” ones, who had already a lot of farming knowledge before WWOOFing (from school, rural background…). Even if the awareness in organic production increase in both cases thanks to WWOOFing, it is less important for the “knowledgeable”, probably because they were already aware of the subject.

As McIntosh and Bonneman (2006) suggested, WWOOFing is different from classic travelling experience or exchange in foreign country because the motivations are not the same. For example, one quarter of respondents (24.3%) have done WWOOFing only in their home country and when we ask the WWOOFers to classify the reasons to do WWOOFing, “learning a new language” or “travelling with low costs” are not considered as the main reasons to do this experience (Figure 7) WWOOFers see in this voluntary exchange a great opportunity to learn farming practice and improve their farming knowledge, with one third of the respondents thinking it is the main reason to do WWOOFing (this rate reaches 50% for those aged of 18-21 years old).

Figure 7: Results from the question 6 “Classify the reasons to do WWOOFing”

WWOOFers look also for a new experience, something different with people having the same values (Koznick, 2013). Indeed, “have a new social experience” is the main reason to do WWOOFing for 30.4% of the respondents, and the main reason when we consider the older group (41-70 years old). WWOOFers look for an authentic experience, with purposeful aspects they cannot find in classic tourist trips. We can also see an enthusiasm for the environment and the wish to spend time in nature; to reconnect with an environment people tend to forget because of a more urban focused way-of-life centralized in cities. This is even truer for the WOOFers aged 30 or more, for whom reconnecting with the nature is seen as one of the most important thing in WWOOFing.

“[I do WWOOFing] to take a break from my city life, to live a way of life that is different from mine “

“Being in rural/country areas (as opposed to stinky cities) outdoors, with fresh air & my hands in the dirt.”

“Being in touch with rural communities, seeing a world outside of an urban, job-centred life. Spending time outside and doing something practical.”

“Doing physical work, spend less time on my computer and more with really interesting people.”

Adding to the ranking question about reason to do WWOOFing, respondent had the opportunity to express other reasons in commentary. Some WWOOFers think this voluntary work on farms is a way to gain experience in order to find a job easily or to add an original experience in their resume. Moreover, through WWOOFing people want to develop their social network: meet people and make new friends. Informal discussion with WWOOFers and my own personal experiences underlined the important social aspect and the quality of relationships created with other WWOOFers and hosts, in a space of trust and beliefs in the same values.

In term of learning, WWOOFing experience not only increases the participants’ awareness in environment and organic food production. It also teaches them skills and knowledge that will be useful in their daily life for 61% of them and maybe useful for 32% (see figure8). 65% of the respondents have or will have a job related with agriculture, and in this case WWOOFing is part both of their personal and professional experiences.

Figure 8 : Results from the question 9. For the majority of WWOOFers, what they learnt during WWOOFing will be useful. It is even more the case for those who (will) have a job related with farming, agriculture and/or environment; but even those who haven’t find an interest in the knowledge they gain, mainly for growing their own food : “my day to day life includes growing stuff on my own allotment” ; “Gardening at home”…

WWOOFing also fosters personal development for the WWOOFer and skills not related with agriculture, but more general about learning about ourselves : self-confidence, managing stress or finding way to solve new problems. By experiencing something new, the volunteers “get out their comfort zone” and gain in social and personal capital as well as gaining in technical knowledge.

“ I’ve improved my practical thinking, use reason to gain time to resolve small problems in everyday life”

“ A different way of life and to look at problems; different ways to manage stress and networking.”

“Maybe we can adapt ourselves more easily after such experience, we learn autonomy and capacity of adaptation.”

Finally, when asked the WWOOFers and hosts to say what is, for them, the best thing about WWOOFing, “meeting new people” and “have a different experience” are the most frequent terms (see figure 9) . Hosts see in the programme a great way to share their knowledge and values with non-farmers, especially with younger people :

“As an older person, I enjoy meeting young people who are striving to live an ethical life. It gives me so much hope for the future, and makes me feel that we are in some way supporting or even contributing to this positive energy embodied in the wwoofers and the wwoof program. When hosts and wwoofers are being true to the wwoof philosophy and not using it for selfish means, it is a wonderful thing. It is promoting goodwill and ethical living on an international and intergenerational level.”

The non-monetary aspect is also much appreciated and builds relations based on trust and sharing. As WWOOFers don’t expect money, their participation is totally based on their willingness and enthusiasm and creates a good atmosphere to enhance indirect learning and exchange between people.

“The feeling of mutual trust. To me, wwoofing is the perfect demonstration that humans, even being total strangers can trust each other and that money has nothing to do with it. The host can trust the wwoofer with their business, animals, house. The wwoofer can trust their host with their safety and also trust that the host will teach them the best of their knowledge”

Figure 9: Cloud of words realized with the answers from the final question “What is, for you, the best thing about WWOOFing”. The bigger words are the ones the most often quoted. The social aspect is well represented with respondents saying that “meeting people” is what they appreciated the most in WWOOFing. The discovery aspect by experiencing something new, a different way-of-life is also seen as something great. The concepts of knowledge, sharing or learning, even if they are not the most often suggested, are totally relevant and are part of WOOFers and hosts expectations.

This cloud of words has been created on the following website: http://www.wordle.net/

To conclude, when the WWOOF movement was initiated in the 70’s, the aim was to foster exchange for urban dwellers who wanted to go back to the countryside and learn organic techniques. With the development of tourism and globalization, the WWOOFing spread worldwide but its aims remain similar. It is not a formal way to learn farming practices, as a field school or apprentice in farm. The concept is more based of cultural and social exchanges between hosts and WWOOFers, who both benefits from the knowledge from each other. The mutual trust and non-monetary exchange enhance the sharing and the creation of friendly relationship, favorable to indirect learning (McEntee). Even if the main motivation for hosting WWOOFers is to help with the workload, farmers always learn something from their WWOOFers, and the opposite way is even truer: WWOOFers increase their knowledge on many aspects: environment, farming practice, personnal development. More than transmitting farming methods and practices, the WWOOFing philosophy plays a key in transmitting values in organic farming and helps the participants to understand better the current issues in environment and food production.

References :

Carolan, M. (2006) Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture? Agriculture and Human Values

Deleage, E. (2010) La coproduction des savoirs dans l’agriculture durable. ISDA 2010, Montpellier, France.

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Koznick, E. (2013). WWOOF, Environmentalism and Ecotopia: Alternative Social Practices between Ideal and Reality” .Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington.

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