Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Grower:
Yes.
CRH:
Because that makes it more clear or...? Makes it more
systematic?
Grower:
Well, they can compare the numbers to their own standard. . . .
Take, for instance, one...[advisor's] trial. [He measured] the number of
[insects] per [plant] in all the different treatments. The grower can look up
there and go, “Well, to me, fi ve per [plant] is what I'm shooting for—that's
acceptable to me, so that's gonna be the best treatment for me.” Whereas
another grower might go, “God, I don't know. I haven't heard any prob-
lems from our harvesting guys and I know I'm using [treatment X], so
twenty per [plant] must be acceptable.” And they're able to then gauge,
on their own standard, how their practice is appropriate.
Each grower in this example had different standards for the level of pest
pressure on a crop, but the advisor's numerical representations met the
practical demands of both. By understanding the specifi c computational
practices of growers, the advisors can make their data more persuasive
(Lave 1988).
This effort at accommodation is balanced with a need to control the kind
of representations gathered from a trial and how they are interpreted.
During the period of my research, the entomology advisor was trying to
get more growers involved in the design stage of fi eld trials. He hoped that
this would make growers feel included and spur them to adopt new prac-
tices more quickly; the celery trial (see fi gures 5.3 and 5.4) was part of this
effort. This situation made the tension between accommodation and
control very clear. The entomology advisor told me about the confl icting
demands that he and growers have for representations of the fi eld:
Entomol:
What's kind of hard for me to realize is that [the growers] are
talking about changing the pest control practices in the fi eld and I'm
interested in what that does to the insects. But, the bottom line is, they
don't care about the insects. What they care about is yield. And insects do
affect yield so ultimately they are interested in the insect population. But
all they really care about is yield, and if it were left up to them totally, all
they would measure is yield. But I, as a scientist, am in there trying to
convince them that they also have to at least look at why that yield
changed from one side to the other. Because if we don't know
that
, then
