Communication among stakeholders within international aid projects has long been recognised as problematic. The authors interviewed five different stakeholders on a Chinese-Australian project to explore whether (a) stakeholders have exclusive worldviews; (b) farmers and donor agencies see farming as a system; and (c) stakeholders can be arranged on a learning spiral, incorporating techno-centric, socio-centric and balanced socio-biological system views. In this sample, the stakeholders had distinct views, with only the donor agency espousing a balanced systemic view.
