Assessing the performance of 'comparative agriculture' methods to determine regional diversity in Australian farming systems: methodological relevance and application in the Western Australian wheatbelt

'Comparative agriculture' is a novel discipline to study the diversity of agriculture. Developed in France, it has been used worldwide but remains largely unknown in English-speaking academia.
This work demonstrated that this discipline deserves wider recogmtion and application, for the valuable evidence it can contribute. In Western Australia, new insights about agriculture were produced by usingits holistic perspective and innovative research tools. This included linking the practices of broadacre farmers and the structure of farms in the central wheatbelt to landscape features and to social conditions, with direct implications for designing policies and for prioritising research and development investments.