Use of reflexive interactive design to address challenges to New Zealand dairy farming

The New Zealand dairy industry will undergo significant changes over the next decades, so as to meet sustainability challenges (environmentally, economically, socially and ethically). The objective of the current study was to tackle these challenges by attempting a radical re-design of the dairy system. The study took a structured approach called reflexive interactive design. The intention was to address complex trade-offs between competing goals, deliberately targeting structural system changes in the systems. Through a series of interviews and design workshops, two concepts were drafted. These concepts are intended to be used as vehicles to construct shared meanings, in conversation with farmers, policy makers, scientists, the public, and other influential actors. Two findings relevant for consideration in redesigning dairy systems were as follows: first, the sustainability issues the industry is facing are interconnected, so solutions to one issue have implications for the others; second, the boundaries of the system to be designed may need to go beyond the farm gate, to include other parts of the value chain, groups of farms and possibly interconnected land uses.