Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the basis for this capital. Despite actors' best attempts to control the pro-
duction of capital from this ecology, however, there are numerous sources
of disruption that challenge their mastery of the structure; anything from
a dry year or a failed experiment to a budget crisis or a war can affect these
exchanges. These disruptions create the need to
repair
these fl ows of pro-
duction—the second conceptual tool that I use to understand the power
relations between science and industrial agriculture. Repair work takes
diverse practical forms, shaped by the interests of actors in how an ecology
produces capital and power. I argue that agricultural science has often
served as a mechanism of this kind of repair for the farm industry, working
on nearly every aspect of the ecology in order to maintain the productivity
and power of the industry.
Figure 1.2 presents the key elements that compose the ecology of power
for science and industrial agriculture. My use of the term
ecology
is bor-
rowed from biology, of course, but also from the fi eld of science and tech-
nology studies, where the concept of institutional ecology is used to analyze
complex social and material networks of activity.
9
The metaphor is useful
because an ecology is a fi eld where elements interact in a hierarchical,
interdependent, dynamic system. Figure 1.2 schematically represents the
interactions of land, plants, scientists, growers, farmworkers, farming tech-
niques, and social institutions that produce not only food but also wealth,
knowledge, and, ultimately, power. Changes to one element in this system
affect the others; the management and control of each element provides
control over the larger system of production and power. In this sense,
power is the ultimate product of this system, but power itself is not a tan-
gible quality or “good” apart from the social and material interactions of
this ecology. Power is an effect that is produced through this interactive
process, and control of the process is the key to power.
There are three levels of analysis in this model (see fi g. 1.2, bottom to
top). Although the distinctions between these three levels of analysis are
artifi cial, they help to clarify the interactions and infl uences between dif-
ferent parts of the ecology, especially those elements that are less visible
yet essential parts of this system of production. The fi rst level, the local
context, forms the base of the model and represents the local
place
where
both agriculture and applied agricultural science happen. The unique inter-
actions of soil, water, climate, and other place-specifi c factors compel both
growers and scientists to account for the local characteristics of a given
