Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The applied character of agroecological partnerships expands the
menu of the scientific activities conducted by its participants. This kind
of agricultural science is not restricted to original laboratory discovery
for consumption by other scientists. Growers, scientists, advocates,
industry leaders, and public officials perceived the problem of agricul-
tural pollution linking field, scientist, growers, market, and public—all
five loops of Latour's model. Many of these actors fashioned feedback
loops to circulate information about public perception of pesticides in
agriculture to scientists and growers, weaving together what others had
perceived to be distinct loops of knowledge. Partnership leaders held out
an alternative vision of agriculture, supported by science with an agro-
ecological orientation, and set about developing and extending the
practices needed to support their agroecological imaginary.
Skeptics have dismissed the importance of the agroecological partner-
ship model, claiming it is nothing more than the incremental progress of
agricultural science responding to environmental regulatory pressure.
Indeed, the agroecological partnership phenomenon would be largely
invisible to the positivist. Partnerships describe the beneficial interaction
between ecological organisms, only tacitly referring to ecological
principles. Scientists and growers have experimented together with eco-
logically informed practices for more than 100 years in California.
Extensionists have promoted resource protection activities and growers
have participated in field-scale demonstrations. These activities are not
new, but, as the next chapter indicates, these partnerships succeed
because they foster the requisite social relations. It is largely through
these developments that the agroecological partnership model reveals the
imaginary that underlies how agroecology moves from theory into
action.
Agroecology in action is much more powerful and persuasive than
ecological knowledge in a laboratory or textbook, confirming Latour's
recommendation to look for circulating knowledge. This chapter demon-
strates how partnership leaders circulated ecological theory into action
out in the field with growers, and then pumped it back to into science
and regulatory institutions. The BIOS partnership exemplifies how
agroecological partnerships vascularized three of the outlying loops in
Latour's model: nature, scientists, and agricultural clients. The next
chapter investigates the motivations of these actors and their reasons for
enrolling in these kinds of science projects.
