Care farms, social work and animals: A cautionary tale
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/anzswj-vol37iss1id1188Keywords:
care farms, animalsAbstract
The term ‘care farm’ refers to place-based therapeutic care practices that take place on farms, including those involved in the meat and dairy industries. In Australia, where the care farming movement is in its infancy, this underdevelopment is represented as a missed opportunity. Carol Bacchi’s (2009) framework for critical policy analysis is adopted to consider whose interests are ignored in this humancentric assessment. A Critical animal studies lens is adopted to consider how farmed animals are positioned in care farming ventures. This animal rights perspective corrects the anthropocentric blind spot, which legitimises the capitalist extraction of therapeutic usefulness from the foreshortened and confined lives of farmed animals, further exploiting their bodies and labour, to deliver marketized cross-species relationships of care. It is argued that to live up to their title, care farms should be vegan and equally attentive to the well-being and flourishing of non-human and human care farming participants
References
Adams, C. J. (1990). The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. Continuum.
Anderson, K. A., Chapin, K. P., Reimer, Z., & Siffri, G. (2017). On fertile ground: An initial evaluation of green care farms in the United States. Home Health Care Services Quarterly, 36(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621424.2017.1291390
Brewer, J. (2019). Judith Brewer, Vic 2019. Churchill Trust. churchilltrust.com.au
Brewer, J. (2022). Caring for farming. https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/fellow/judith-brewer-vic-2019/
Butler, R. (2023). Are humans good for goats? Assessing the welfare of goats engaged in human interaction in a care farm setting [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Pennsylvania. https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/2742
Cacciatore, J., Gorman, R., & Thieleman, K. (2020). Evaluating care farming as a means to care for those in trauma and grief. Health & Place, 62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102281
Cole, M. (2011). From “animal machines” to “happy meat”? Foucault's ideas of disciplinary and pastoral power applied to ‘animal-centred’welfare discourse. Animals, 1(1), 83–101.
De Bruin, S. R., Oosting, S. J., Kuin, Y., Hoefnagels, E. C., Blauw, Y. H., Groot, L. C. D., & Schols, J. M. (2009). Green care farms promote activity among elderly people with dementia. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 23(4), 368–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763890903327275
Duvnjak, A., & Dent, A. (2023). The consideration of animals within Australian social work curriculum. Australian Social Work, 1–13.
Elings, M., & Hassink, J. (2008). Green care farms, a safe community between illness or addiction and the wider society. Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 310–322.
Fell-Chambers, R. (2020). Care farming, learning and young people: An exploration into the possible contribution of care farming to young people’s engagement with learning [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Hull. https://bgro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/814/1/Fell-Chambers_care%20farming.pdf
Fraser, H., & Taylor, N. (2020). Critical (animal) social work: Insights from ecofeminist and critical animal studies in the context of neoliberalism. In. C. Morley, P. Ablett., C. Noble, & S. Cowden, (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of critical pedagogies for social work (pp. 296–309). Routledge.
Fraser, H., Taylor, N., & Morley, C. (2017). Critical social work and cross-species care: An intersectional perspective on ethics, principles, and practices. In B. Pease, A. Vreugdenhil & S. Stanford (Eds.), Critical ethics of care in social work (pp. 229–240). Routledge.
Gerdes, K. E., & Segal, E. (2011). Importance of empathy for social work practice: Integrating new science. Social Work, 56(2), 141–148.
Gorman, R. (2017). Therapeutic landscapes and non-human animals: The roles and contested positions of animals within care farming assemblages, Social & Cultural Geography, 18(3), 315–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1180424
Gorman, R. (2019). What's in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering therapeutic human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming. Medical Humanities, 45(3), 313–325. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011627
Gorman, R., & Cacciatore, J. (2020). Care-farming as a catalyst for healthy and sustainable lifestyle choices in those affected by traumatic grief. NJAS-Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2020.100339
Gruen, L. (2014). Entangled empathy: An alternative ethic for our relationships with animals. Lantern Books.
Hassink, J., De Bruin, S. R., Berget, B, & Elings, M. (2017). Exploring the role of farm animals in providing care at care farms. Animals, 7(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/ani7060045
Hassink, J., Elings, M., Zweekhorst, M., van den Nieuwenhuizen, N., & Smit, A. (2010). Care farms in the Netherlands: Attractive empowerment-oriented and strengths-based practices in the community. Health & Place, 16(3), 423–430.
Hassink, J., Hulsink, W., & Grin, J. (2014). Farming with care: The evolution of care farming in the Netherlands. NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 68(1), 1–11.
Hine, R., Peacock, J., & Pretty, J. (2008). Care farming in the UK: Contexts, benefits, and links with therapeutic communities. Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 245–260.
Kaley, A., Hatton, C., & Milligan, C. (2019). Therapeutic spaces of care farming: transformative or ameliorating? Social Science & Medicine, 227, 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.011
Leck, C., Evans, N., & Upton, D. (2014). Agriculture–Who cares? An investigation of ‘care farming’ in the UK. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 313–325.
Machowicz, T., & Diethelm, S. (Directors). (2022). The Unbound Project – Sarah Heiligtag, Founder of Transfarmation [Film]. We Animals Media. https://unboundproject.org/sarah-heiligtag-founder-of-transfarmation/
Plumwood, V. (1986). Ecofeminism: An overview and discussion of positions and arguments. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64(sup1), 120–138.
Ryan, T. (2011). Animals and social work: A moral introduction. Palgrave Macmillan.
Salliou, N. (2023). Quitting livestock farming: transfarmation pathways and factors of change from post-livestock farmers’ accounts. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1122992
Schreuder, E., Rijnders, M., Vaandrager, L., Hassink, J., Enders-Slegers, M. J., & Kennedy, L. (2014). Exploring salutogenic mechanisms of an outdoor experiential learning programme on youth care farms in the Netherlands: Untapped potential? International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 19(2), 139–152.
Taylor, N., Fraser, H., Signal, T., & Prentice, K. (2016). Social work, animal-assisted therapies, and ethical considerations: A programme example from Central Queensland, Australia. The British Journal of Social Work, 46, 135–152.
Taylor, N., & Twine, R. (2014). Locating the “critical” in critical animal studies. In N. Taylor & R. Twine (Eds.), The rise of critical animal studies: From the margins to the centre (pp. 1–15). Taylor & Francis Group.
Thera Farms Australia. (2022). https://www.therafarms.com.au/
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
By completing the online submission process, you confirm you accept this agreement. The following is the entire agreement between you and the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) and it may be modified only in writing.
You and any co-authors
If you are completing this agreement on behalf of co-authors, you confirm that you are acting on their behalf with their knowledge.
First publication
By submitting the work you are:
- granting the ANZASW the right of first publication of this work;
- confirming that the work is original; and
- confirming that the work has not been published in any other form.
Once published, you are free to use the final, accepted version in any way, as outlined below under Copyright.
Copyright
You assign copyright in the final, accepted version of your article to the ANZASW. You and any co-authors of the article retain the right to be identified as authors of the work.
The ANZASW will publish the final, accepted manuscript under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows anyone – including you – to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.
A human-readable summary of the licence is available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, which includes a link to the full licence text.
Under this licence you can use the final, published version of the article freely – such as depositing a copy in your institutional research repository, uploading a copy to your profile on an academic networking site or including it in a different publication, such as a collection of articles on a topic or in conference proceedings – provided that original publication in Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work is acknowledged.
This agreement has no effect on any pre-publication versions or elements, which remain entirely yours, and to which we claim no right.
Reviewers hold copyright in their own comments and should not be further copied in any way without their permission.
The copyright of others
If your article includes the copyright material of others (e.g. graphs, diagrams etc.), you confirm that your use either:
- falls within the limits of fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review or fair use; OR
- that you have gained permission from the rights holder for publication in an open access journal.
