Well, I’d got as far as choosing my topic: Further regulation of farming and farming waste management is needed to protect our waterways.
Floundering around for somewhere to start I took the advice
any teenager would give: Google it. Soon I was entrenched in the public stoush
in 2012 between a Massey Lecturer - Mike Joy - and Federated farmers who were
playing down the impact of farming on the environment. Mike Joy defended his
position with a host of peer reviewed and scholarly resources. GOLD! Save to
favourites
It looks like a no brainer at this stage – Position that is
reached through scholarly research vs Defencive and emotive arguments from
self- interested groups. After some meditation (or was that medication) I
decided not to make life difficult by taking the contrary view. I was in
unfamiliar territory with this environmental stuff.
It was really interesting reading and the hours passed very
pleasantly trolling the net. Without realizing it (probably because I hadn’t
listened to that part of the lectures) I was doing background reading. Soon I felt I had the bones of the assignment - now for some
serious hours in the gym (library) putting some muscle on it and then hours of
grooming and reflection before the great reveal on 7th December.
When I started to look for more references I started to feel overwhelmed. So much new information about where and how to search. Already so many random PDF downloaded and webpages saved to favourites. I decided a good strategy would be to break it down and make some lists that could be modified if needed:
1. Follow up on Mike Joys references
2. Start searching the Massey library
3. Use Google scholar and Google site:govt.nz.
I made another list of what I needed to look for:
1. Scholarly articles to support the case for not regulating
farming / Information about the contribution of farming to the economy
2. More information about the impact of other types of
farming, besides dairy.
3. More up to date information
Saturday team meet up at Ironique: Good coffee. Pretty straight forward, no detectable irony. Perhaps that in itself is ironic. Good to get away from the lists and be with other students facing the same demands of 119.115.
A good reminder of the power of teams: The endorsement of
Endnote by Cherie was very timely.
“Download endnote” had been on another to do list. It’s a great
tool for keeping it all together and keeping track of the references as they
are used. It was almost an AHA moment.I still had a lot of work to do but I could see the way forward very clearly.
6 comments:
Excellent to hear that your research process is going smoothly! I like the way you took a systematic approach to your research by breaking it down into steps, I didn't do that which resulted in a slightly more haphazard approach. I may have found myself less frustrated early on, had I done so.
"Further regulation of farming and farming waste management is needed to protect our waterways. "
Or ... maybe better protection of actual property rights?
http://pc.blogspot.co.nz/2008/02/dirty-dairying-and-dodgy-drafting.html
HMMMM ... there is always that!.
There is the problem of who owns the river - damn thing keeps moving but staying in the same place.
Not a problem. Even water has rights associated with it under common law (where common law is still recognised) -- not necessarily to the molecules in the river, but to rights in the flow , in fishing and recreation, in all the riparian rights associated with land-owning beside a water body etc. These rights give standing under common law to take specific action against specific polluters.
http://pc.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/water-water-everywhere.html
Unfortunately, in NZ, we're trying to do that through the RMA, which essentially just grants a license to pollute.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-rma-continues-to-protect-polluters.html
Great to hear that your research is going well, if a little overwhelming. I Like the way you have broken it down into manageable sections. Hope endnote is working well for you.
Great breakdown list Gabrielle, sounds like a good way to tackle the overwhelming amount of literature out there. The Mike Joy stuff sounds very interesting. And yes, Endnote is great (once i figured out how to use it!)
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