Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5 Making a Place for Science: The Field Trial
Nature's Moving Target
Agriculture
literally means “fi eld cultivation,” a blend of land and the prac-
tices used for growing crops in a particular locale. These two fundamental
elements of agriculture—a local farming place and the work of farming—
represent an ongoing balance between intervention and adaptation, where
growers try to control nature to their own ends, namely, producing food.
If modernity has changed anything about this relationship, it is only in
the overall balance between adaptation and intervention. For example,
although one grape grower acknowledged that there was nothing he could
do about the unusually high amount of rain falling one year in the Salinas
Valley and claimed that this helplessness “keeps them humble,” most
growers, with their predilection for research and intervention, seemed to
agree with the attitude of another grower, who said, “Any time you're
working with Mother Nature, you have a moving target.” In order to grow
niche market crops on an industrial scale, growers have invested a great
deal of effort in this kind of intervention, transforming the Salinas Valley
into a unique “place”; furthermore, this transformation is ongoing, as
growers adjust to climatic factors and pest pressures that can change
daily.
In many respects, a farm advisor's work represents how he or she would
like to participate in this process of intervention. An extension program is
a program for change, and advisors must also tailor their work to the
unique land and farming practices in their assigned county. In addition,
advisors' intervention has the added complication of the growers them-
selves: they must somehow convince growers to change
their
practices on
