Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Southwest Wisconsin Farmer Research Network, worked with some UW
faculty to propose an alternative way of integrating farmer and rural
community interests with university research. After a two-year process,
UW's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences established the Center for
Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) in 1989. This center collaborates
with stakeholders to identify research priorities, conduct research, and
extend this knowledge (frequently through networks). The coalition per-
suaded the legislature and the governor to fund CIAS as a permanent
budget item.
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In the early 1990s, dairy farmers knew more about inten-
tional rotational grazing than did scientific researchers. One of CIAS's
first projects was to convene graziers, extensionists, and scientists on
equal footing to conduct research of practical value to farmers. As of
2005, more than 20 percent of Wisconsin dairy farmers practice some
form of rotational grazing.
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The Institutional Ecology of American Agricultural Science
Silent Spring
was published on the centenary of the Morrill Act, and it
heralded the end of an era. For its first hundred years, the land-grant
university (LGU) system, chartered by Congress to assist pioneer
America with the practical science to build the country, was seen as an
unqualified success. Indeed, up until World War II it was probably the
largest single scientific institution in the world. Funded by public tax dol-
lars, the LGU system produced an astonishing quantity of scientific
knowledge and practical technologies. The agricultural production sys-
tems designed by LGU researchers, fueled by billions of dollars of federal
crop subsidies, produce far more food than America could ever possibly
consume, but at substantial social and environmental cost. Rachel
Carson launched a line of questioning that continues to provoke debate
about the role of LGUs in American society: Do they produce the kind
of agricultural science the public really wants?
Agroecological initiatives in industrialized countries face two funda-
mental problems: persuading agricultural science institutions to provide
expert, ecologically informed knowledge, but to do so in a way that facil-
itates the active engagement by farmers in learning about the particularity
of their own farming system. The stories from Wisconsin and Iowa relate
the challenges facing farmers and rural communities as they sought
