This past week we looked at a case study performed on a one year-long trial participatory research project in the United Kingdom. The Polyveg Garden Project was an attempt by the Permaculture Association (PA) to move towards academic research by looking at the productivity of a polyveg garden, in which a variety of vegetables are planted together, and the ease with which farmers can maintain these gardens. The PA employed the help of 50 farmers throughout the UK, with 24 of them providing quality data at the end of the study. Because this was seen as a scientific project, the lead researchers did not feel that an ethical committee needed to be consulted, and fortunately enough they did not really encounter any major ethical issues that hindered the project too much. The two main ethical issues that developed were the definition of what research is and how it should be conducted, and communication between the leaders and the volunteers. The issue that I personally felt was most important was ensuring proper communication throughout the project.

The volunteers working on the project were farmers and gardeners associated with the PA and came from very diverse backgrounds. In order to ensure proper, controlled scientific methodology, the project leaders created an instructions manual that they felt would be easy to understand and follow, however, not everyone had experience growing polyveg gardens or conducting scientific research. Furthermore, because the project spanned the entire UK, weather conditions forced some participants to stray from the provided instructions, leading to questions of the validity of their data. If I were in charge of this project I would have approached this issue in a different manner. First, I would have restricted the project to one specific region to ensure similar weather conditions and a more controlled experiment. This would also eliminate some pressure on the volunteers because they can now follow the instructions knowing that they are applicable to their situation and will yield the desired product. Second, I would have organized a training day where the project and the specifics of carrying it out would be discussed with the participants. This would again lead to more reliable data, but more importantly, having this face-to-face interaction with the volunteers would open the door to better communication and to the development of trust. Lastly, I would encourage feedback from the volunteers on how the project is going and focus more on the second question the PA was looking at: the practicality for farmers to grow polyveg gardens. This is an important aspect of the project that was not touched upon at all in the case study. Although this is a scientific project looking at the efficiency of polyveg gardens, it will be these farmers and gardeners who would be growing and maintaining these gardens if they were proven to be more productive, therefore it is imperative that the human aspect of the project is explored. To do this, I would hold monthly check-ins where the volunteers could express how they feel about polyveg gardening and whether it is a sustainable method that they would employ in the future. Having this feedback would make this a more applicable project.

Therefore, if this project were to be repeated again, there should be a larger focus on ethical issues such as communication.