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"It's More of a Lifestyle'': Design Considerations for Supporting Everyday Practices in Community-Based Farming

Minghe Lu, Zhanming Chen, May Sunmin Hwang, Ji Youn Shin

Abstract

Farming plays a significant role in the economy by supporting related industries such as food, retail, and local services. Community-based small farms, while offering unique social and cultural benefits, face persistent challenges, including limited access to formal education and underdeveloped infrastructure, which have been discussed in prior research. This study focuses on community-driven factors, such as workarounds for recording critical information and practices for passing down farming knowledge across generations. Through 11 semi-structured interviews with farmers from a small ethnic community, the Hmong, we explore how bonding social capital, rooted in close family and community ties, supports informal knowledge exchange and creates pathways to bridging and linking capital. These relationships help farmers connect to broader networks, resources, and institutions. Our findings highlight opportunities for designing technologies that support and strengthen existing support systems. We discuss how technologies should be designed to reflect the cultural values, unique practices, and intergenerational relationships embedded in community-based farms.

"It's More of a Lifestyle'': Design Considerations for Supporting Everyday Practices in Community-Based Farming

Abstract

Farming plays a significant role in the economy by supporting related industries such as food, retail, and local services. Community-based small farms, while offering unique social and cultural benefits, face persistent challenges, including limited access to formal education and underdeveloped infrastructure, which have been discussed in prior research. This study focuses on community-driven factors, such as workarounds for recording critical information and practices for passing down farming knowledge across generations. Through 11 semi-structured interviews with farmers from a small ethnic community, the Hmong, we explore how bonding social capital, rooted in close family and community ties, supports informal knowledge exchange and creates pathways to bridging and linking capital. These relationships help farmers connect to broader networks, resources, and institutions. Our findings highlight opportunities for designing technologies that support and strengthen existing support systems. We discuss how technologies should be designed to reflect the cultural values, unique practices, and intergenerational relationships embedded in community-based farms.
Paper Structure (25 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 25 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Social Capital in the Design of Sociotechnical Systems
  4. Agricultural Technologies to Support Farming Communities
  5. Information Tracking in Different Social Contexts
  6. Methods
  7. Study Context: Small Community-Based Farming
  8. Data Collection
  9. Preliminary Observations and Rapport Building
  10. Semi-structured Interviews
  11. Ethical Considerations
  12. Participants
  13. Data Analysis
  14. Results
  15. Adapting Planning and Tracking to Fit Diverse and Rotational Farming Practices
  16. ...and 10 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Observation and mapping activities.
  • Figure 2: Intercropping and planning sketch.
  • Figure 3: Dense layout and hand tools.
  • Figure 4: The staff members of a local association packaged farmers’ produce outside the cold storage on the farm, which would be delivered to the customers enrolled in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
  • Figure 5: A farmer showed the study team how their parents taught them to measure the spacing between planting holes by gripping the hoe handle at a specific spot, using their hand placement as a reference.