Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Agroecology in America: An Integrated
System of Science and Farming
Reversing the Logic
Mike Cannell recognized that his conventional dairy farming system just
wasn't working any more. Costs were rising as milk prices fell, and he
was working harder and harder only to make less. He had to re-think his
approach to farming or get out. His friend Jim Brown had read about
New Zealand's intentional rotational grazing strategies, and the discus-
sion groups organized by farmers to exchange knowledge about them.
They began to experiment with intentional rotational grazing individu-
ally, but consulted frequently with each other to try to understand its
ecological dynamics. They recognized its multiple benefits, but realized
they had a lot to learn. A network of peers like the New Zealand discus-
sion groups would help them share their knowledge of grazing more
efficiently, and it would help them learn more. In reality, they had no
other choice as they started the Ocooch Grazers Network in 1993,
because the University of Wisconsin (UW) offered these “grass radicals”
no information on this technique. As Neva Hassanein documents in
Changing the Way America Farms: Knowledge and Community in the
Sustainable Agriculture Movement
, these Wisconsin graziers developed
new strategies to generate, exchange, and extend alternative scientific
knowledge. Jim Brown and Mike Cannell realized that they were on to
something when so many of their neighbors began calling them about
their “dairy heresy.”
1
For 100 years the University of Wisconsin had invested in developing
sophisticated science and associated technologies that inform conven-
tional dairy production, which is now an industrial activity, intensive in
capital, technology, and labor. It is predicated on the economic logic of
