Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Conclusion: Integrating Alternative Farming Systems into the LGUs
During the 1980s, Jim Cannell, Jim Brown, Dick Thompson, and
California's partnership pioneers asked their state extension agents
for help with issues they thought merited scientific attention, but they
found the university had little to offer them. They did not want more
technology transferred. They wanted a different kind of science for an
alternative kind of agriculture. They needed a different kind of program
for an alternative kind of extension.
The land-grant university is an extraordinary scientific institution,
remarkable for its size and impact. Unfortunately, it has tended to
conceptualize it clientele rather narrowly, and created knowledge and
technologies that have benefited a limited portion of the farming com-
munity. With the help of Latour's interpretive tool, we can see that LGU
scientists and administrators have not paid sufficient attention to devel-
opments outside the “colleagues” and “content” loops (loops 2 and 5).
Agricultural science's knowledge about undesirable consequences of
industrial practices was being circulated outside these loops, by critics
such as Carson, Hightower, groups they inspired, the USEPA, and the
National Research Council. They argued for alternatives to the domi-
nant production systems.
Advocates for alternative agricultural science and extension programs
have generally had to overcome deep-seated institutional resistance, and
when they have succeeded, these programs have remained rather small.
These programs understand small and medium farmers as their primary
clientele, so their marginal political power should not be surprising.
Many suffer serious and sustained budget cuts. Nevertheless, they have
facilitated some scientific experts stepping out into the field to help
develop agroecological alternatives, and the limited entry of agroecolog-
ical approaches into the dominant agricultural science institution in the
United States.
