Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
farming region is experiencing a long-term decline, and I can drive on
country roads in any direction from my home to see abandoned farms
marked by crumbling barns and fi elds fi lled with dandelions. Whereas once
dairy farms in this region could survive with a herd of 50 or fewer cows,
that number has steadily crept upward to over 100 cows in 2006. More
than half of New York State's dairy farms failed between 1980 and 2000;
the remaining farms are increasingly employing a set of industrialized
institutions, practices, and technologies fi rst pioneered in the nation's
leading dairy state, California. Driving through the dairy regions of
California, especially the huge operations typical of the Central Valley,
where herd sizes average more than 900 cows and sprawling feed lots
often contain thousands, provides a vision of the likely future of dairying
in places like New York State.
1
These landscapes raise diffi cult questions about the future of farming in
the United States. Without trying to return to an idyllic agrarian vision,
one can ask whether that kind of food production is what our nation
wants and needs. Considering the steady decline of farming as an occupa-
tion and way of life during the last two centuries, there seems little possi-
bility of turning back the economic and technological trends that drove
these changes. And yet, one of the greatest insights of the academic fi eld
that most inspired this topic—science and technology studies—is that ideas
and things that we take for granted have a history of contingency, that
there are many parallel universes that might have been and perhaps still
could be. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in issues related to the
politics of food and agriculture, suggesting the possibility of renewed
debate and fresh ideas regarding the future of U.S. farming.
2
In this chapter I offer a brief critique of the economic and technological
determinism that governs much of our thinking about agriculture and
inhibits optimism about change. My intention is not to make a compre-
hensive set of proposals about what the future of agriculture ought to be,
but I do argue that U.S. agriculture at the start of the twenty-fi rst century
is not environmentally or socially sustainable; it needs transformative
repair. Further, and perhaps in confl ict with the apparent logic and history
of prior agricultural change, I believe that the land-grant universities, and
especially Cooperative Extension, have an important role to play in this
transformation.
