Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
never the same. For this reason, agriculture has been called “the fi rst
empirical science” because it is essentially a seasonal experiment (Busch,
Lacy, and Burkhardt 1991). Growers have always experimented with new
techniques and technologies to improve yield and quality while at the
same time seeking to understand the complex interaction of soil, water,
climate, and life to improve conditions of predictability and control.
In this sense, science and agriculture share a practical interest in a kind
of mastery of the world, disciplining and systematizing it into a form that
reduces but does not quite eliminate uncertainty. In neither case is this
mastery a matter of purely academic concern; instead, the ability to effec-
tively control people and things is a critical source of power. 7 Mundane
technical practices like how crops are fertilized or how bugs are controlled
may not seem closely related to lofty matters like power, but there is an
essential link between them. The fertilizer dealer quoted previously empha-
sized the local conditions for farming, the infl uence of commodity markets,
and how these factors interact and shape each other. To understand the
relationships between growers and agricultural scientists, it makes sense
to study the multiple levels of material and social stuff that are the subject
of their work. The diffi culty with this approach lies in theorizing the con-
nections between these diverse factors; scholarly research on science and
agriculture tends to focus more strongly on one or another level of analysis.
For example, work in science and technology studies (STS) concentrates
most often on the local culture and practice of scientifi c communities,
whereas research in the sociology of agriculture emphasizes the political
economy of agricultural markets, industry organization, and state institu-
tions. 8 My goal here is to develop analytic tools that bridge these levels of
analysis, to understand the ways that local interactions are connected with
institutional structures. I use two interrelated concepts to understand these
relationships.
First, I conceptualize the diverse social and material elements behind
industrial agriculture as an ecology of power , a broad system of social and
material production that forms the larger playing fi eld where growers and
agricultural scientists work to turn products created from local contexts—
food, commodities, data, knowledge—into capital that is transferable to
other institutions. These forms of economic and social capital are made
valuable through this process of exchange and, in turn, can provide actors
with control and infl uence over the very places and practices that serve as
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