Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
attention to the fact that pesticides are used in agriculture, so they
recently conducted an advertising campaign with images of Michigan
family farmers and the slogan: “do you know where your baby food
comes from?” Like Sun-Maid, Gerber is doing everything it can to avoid
being tarred with the next Alar scare, but does not want to talk about
pesticide reduction because it does not want to talk about pesticides at
all. Gerber is negotiating with Protected Harvest for certification as well.
Conclusion
Agriculture is an economic activity, and by coupling economic rewards
with agroecological knowledge, partnerships accelerate the circulation of
science through networks. This does not debase agroecology, but on the
contrary, makes it more viable, more powerful, more influential. Latour
would argue that these economic incentives are just as much a part of
agroecology as is the understanding of biological control or cover crops.
Economic advantage is a powerful incentive for social learning. Ohmart
and the Lodi partnership have created a full-blown working model that
reflects Latour's circulatory system of science. This system is doubly fed
by agroecological knowledge linked with economic incentive. They have
knotted economic and environmental quality.
People work better together when they have reason to collaborate. The
partnership participants this chapter describes have recognized that it is
in their own best interests to work together. What they perceive as the
greatest economic threat is not competition from their neighbor growers
but competition from growers of the same crops in other countries.
Sustained collaboration has helped them overcome production and
public representation problems over the past decade, and appears the
most likely strategy to help American agriculture survive in the future.
