Social Networks for Healthy Soils

Handbook for Leadership and Change

Our goal is healthy soils, farms, and families. We believe that leadership and collaboration are the keys. Improving soil takes a willingness to see things differently and do things differently, at the individual, community, industry and government levels. The OSN holds a collective desire to improve soil on our own farms, promote soil health in Ontario and share our time, talents and knowledge with each other to get there.
“Is it our job to push soil health or to just lead by example?” asks Laurent (Woody) Van Arkel, a Dresden area farmer and co-founder of OSN. “Trying to convert someone just creates animosity. I don’t want to judge anyone, but create a support group for ourselves to make our farms successful – and that will be our message.”

The realcrisis of leadership and of soil health is when we believe it is someone else’s job to do it. We are all leaders,and our mission is to inspire and connect a community to make a difference.

Social Networks for Healthy Soils

Whether it be community organizing, innovation adoption or change management – there are a lot of social factors that influence your success. We recently hosted a think tank of like-minded organizations to build a better understanding of the influence of social networks, social proofing and social norms on change.  We used our own case studies on soil health adoption to root theory in practice, but the key concepts are boundless.

Check out our report and recordings of the event, below!

This think tank was held over the course of 2 days:

Segment 1: Explore quantitative and descriptive aspects of social networks with Damon Centola & Julia Baird

Segment 2: Dive in to the behavioural and economic science of networks, norms and nudges with Tongzhe Li & Erin Nelson