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= Another Technoscience is Possible: Agricultural Lessons for the Posthumanities  =
[http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/ISBN_Numbers ISBN: 978-1-60785-253-7]


edited by Gabriela Mendez Cota  
''edited by'' [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Agriculture/bio Gabriela Méndez Cota] __TOC__


<br>
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Agriculture/Introduction '''Introduction: The Posthuman Life of Agriculture''']  ==


==  ==
When Foucault introduced the concept of biopolitics, he referred to a historically specific power agenda involving a particular approach to life. This approach was at the root of the modern sciences of biology and political economy, both of which set out to describe, explain and manage their objects of study as abstract processes of production and reproduction. Agricultural science must be situated in relation to the biopolitical agenda of 'applying' the modern scientific approach to the management of social life.&nbsp;[http://www.jae-online.org/back-issues/58-volume-37-number-4-1996/556-the-origins-of-agriscience-or-where-did-all-that-scientific-agriculture-come-from.html The scientification of agriculture]&nbsp;took place in the United States towards the end of the 19th century, through a process that entailed both a delegitimation of farmer-generated knowledges and [http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/browse/title/7032038.html the production of new, modern subjectivities].&nbsp;As farmers became entrepreneurs in need of scientific education and advice, newly trained agronomists devoted themselves to designing fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds with the goal of maximizing yields. Public institutions were created which coordinated agricultural production with both science and trade policy. Agricultural science was thus inseparable from the process which transformed much of US agriculture into transnational agribusiness, and local farming networks all over the world into consumer endpoints of a globalized food industry. [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Agriculture/Introduction (more...)]


==  ==
== Readings ==


== Introduction  ==
;Alison G. Power&nbsp;
:[http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/2959.full Ecosystem Services and Agriculture: Tradeoffs and Synergies]
;Andrew K. Evers, Amanda Bambrick, Simon Lacombe, Michael C. Dougherty, Matthias Peichl, Andrew M. Gordon, Naresh V. Thevathasan, Joann Whalen and Robert L. Bradley&nbsp;
:[http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toasj/articles/V004/SI0047TOASJ/49TOASJ.pdf Potential Greenhouse Gas Mitigation through Temperate Tree-Based Intercropping Systems]
;Vincent Thieu, Gilles Billen, Josette Garnier and Marc Benoît&nbsp;
:[http://www.springerlink.com/content/w218435644u81584/fulltext.html Nitrogen Cycling in a Hypothetical Scenario of Generalised Organic Agriculture in the Seine, Somme and Scheldt Watersheds]
;Acácio A. Navarrete, Fabiana S. Cannavan, Rodrigo G. Taketani and Tsiu M. Tsai&nbsp;
:[http://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/2/5/787/pdf A Molecular Survey of the Diversity of Microbial Communities in Different Amazonian Agricultural Model Systems]
;Wagner Bettiol, Raquel Ghini, José Abrahao Haddad Galvao, Marcos Antônio Vieira Ligo and Jeferson Luiz de Carvhalo Mineiro&nbsp;
:[http://www.scielo.br/pdf/sa/v59n3/10591.pdf Soil Organisms in Organic and Conventional Cropping Systems]
;Chengyun Li, Xiahong He, Shusheng Zhu, Huiping Zhou, Yunyue Wang, Yan Li, Jing Yang, Jinxiang Fan, Jincheng Yang, Guibin Wang, Yunfu Long, Jiayou Xu, Yongsheng Tang, Gaohui Zhao, Jiangrong Yang, Lin Liu, Yan Sun, Yong Xie, Haining Wang and Youyong Zhu&nbsp;
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008049 Crop Diversity for Yield Increase]
;Ricardo Antonio Marenco and Ávila Maria Bastos Santos&nbsp;
:[http://www.scielo.br/pdf/pab/v34n10/7189.pdf Crop Rotation Reduces Weed Competition and Increases Chlorophyll Concentration and Rice Yield]
;Samuel Kilonzo Mutiga, Linnet S. Gohole and Elmada O. Auma&nbsp;
:[http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jas/article/view/7432/7872 Agronomic Performance of Collards under Two Intercrops and Varying Nitrogen Application Levels as Assessed Using Land Equivalent Ratios]
;Gregory A. Jones and Jennifer L. Gillett&nbsp;
:[http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1653/0015-4040%282005%29088%5B0091%3AIWSTAB%5D2.0.CO%3B2 Intercropping with Sunflowers to Attract Beneficial Insects in Organic Agriculture]
;Cristina A. Faria, Felix L. Wäckers, Jeremy Pritchard, David A. Barrett, Ted C. J. Turlings&nbsp;
:[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000600 High Susceptibility of Bt Maize to Aphids Enhances the Performance of Parasitoids of Lepidopteran Pests]
;Andréia S. Guimaraes and José S. Mourao&nbsp;
:[http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/pdf/1746-4269-2-42.pdf Management of Plant Species for Controlling Pests by Peasant Farmers at Lagoa Seca, Paraíba State, Brazil: An Ethnoecological Approach]
;Julia Quartz&nbsp;
:[http://www.ijtds.com/IJTDS1_1_quartz.pdf Creative Dissent with Technoscience in India: The Case of Non-Pesticidal Management (NPM) in Andra Pradesh]
;Jack Kloppenburg&nbsp;
:[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2010.00275.x/full Impending Dispossession, Enabling Repossession: Biological Open Source and the Recovery of Seed Sovereignty]
;Keith Aoki&nbsp;
:[http://law2.fordham.edu/publications/articles/500flspub17892.pdf "Free Seeds, not Free Beer": Participatory Plant Breeding, Open Source Seeds, and Acknowledging User Innovation in Agriculture]
;Derek Byerlee and Harvey Jesse Dubin&nbsp;
:[http://www.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/ijc/article/view/147/113 Crop Improvement in the CGIAR as a Global Success Story of Open Access and International Collaboration]
;Laxmi Prasad Pant and Helen Hambly-Odame&nbsp;
:[http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/pant_odame_creative_commons4final2rev.pdf Creative Commons: Non-Proprietary Innovation Triangles in International Agricultural and Rural Development Partnerships]


= The Posthuman Life of Agriculture: Local Knowledges, Open Source Lives =
== [http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Agriculture/Attributions '''Attributions'''] ==


== <br> ==
== A 'Frozen' PDF Version of this Living Book ==


When Foucault introduced the concept of biopolitics he referred to a historically specific power agenda involving a particular approach to life. This approach was at the root of the modern sciences of biology and political economy, both of which set out to describe, explain and manage their objects of study as abstract processes of production and reproduction. Agricultural science must be situated in relation to the biopolitical agenda of 'applying' the modern scientific approach to the management of social life.&nbsp;[http://www.jae-online.org/back-issues/58-volume-37-number-4-1996/556-the-origins-of-agriscience-or-where-did-all-that-scientific-agriculture-come-from.html The scientification of agriculture]&nbsp;<u></u>took place in the United States towards the end of the 19th century through a process that entailed both a delegitimation of farmer-generated knowledges and [http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/browse/title/7032038.html the production of new, modern subjectivities].&nbsp;As farmers became entrepreneurs in need of scientific education and advice, newly trained agronomists devoted themselves to designing fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds with the goal of maximizing yields. Public institutions were created which coordinated agricultural production with both science and trade policy. Agricultural science was thus inseparable from the process which transformed much of US agriculture into transnational agribusiness, and local farming networks all over the world into consumer endpoints of a globalized food industry.
;[http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/AnotherTechnoscienceisPossible.pdf Download a 'frozen' PDF version of this book as it appeared on 7th October 2011]
 
<br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times; mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">More than 20 years ago [http://www.dces.wisc.edu/faculty/kloppenburg/index.php Jack Kloppenburg], a rural
sociologist and long-standing advocate of farmer-generated local knowledges, wrote that
'agricultural science as currently constituted provides neither a complete, nor
an adequate, nor even a best possible account of the sphere of agricultural
production' (2009: 248). Agriculture has been reduced by agriscience to the
exploitation of land through intensive monoculture farming. Oriented towards
the conquest of foreign markets, agricultural production has been made to
depend on mechanization, agrochemicals, and the constant replacement of
improved crop varieties. A cultivar with improved disease or insect resistance
performs well for a few years (typically 5-9), after which yields begin to
drop, productivity is threatened by weeds or pests that have become resistant
to agrochemicals, and a more promising cultivar comes to replace the previous
one (Altieri 2001). In recent years, the efficiency of commercial 'inputs' has
decreased and the yields of key crops have in some places been leveling off.
Mainstream agroscientists believe that this is happening because the maximum
yield potential of current varieties is being approached, and therefore genetic
engineering must be applied to the task of redesigning crops. Critics of
agriscience, however, argue that such a solution would would only make things
wors, since it would amount to an intensification of the conventional
destructive paradigm (Altieri 2001). It is well-known today that
chemical-intensive monoculture farming has everywhere led to soil erosion,
water pollution and numerous other serious damages such as the loss of plant
and animal species, the destruction of natural pest control mechanisms, the
consequent proliferation of new pests and 'super weeds', and [http://cleanseedcapital.com/press/?p=924 global warming]</span>. While contemporary biotechnolgy is being promoted by some as the only rational solution to both food security and environmental disaster, many point out that in a form of capitalism dominated by intellectual property rights it will most likely elevate input costs for small and medium-scale farmers to such an extent that the amount of energy they invest will constantly threaten to surpass the energy they harvest. Such a situation will in turn favor further concentration of agribusiness in the hands of a few transnational corporations. <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br>
 
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">Since the 1960s, activists and academics have
increasingly denounced the link between hegemonic forms of science and the
social and environmental destruction caused by industrial capitalism.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">As
Kloppenburg states, 'the agricultural sector provides a uniquely appropriate
concrete terrain for the testing of a whole range of theoretical propositions'
and for 'the necessary work of developing and elaborating the here-and-now
prefigurative norms of what might one day be a transformed science' (2009:
261). Feminists, social researchers of science and technology,
poststructuralist anthropologists, and increasing numbers of [http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Crouch-Debating-Responsibilities1apr90.htm life scientists]&nbsp;</span>have shown, in a number of ways, how modern agriscience has involved a neglect of physical, biological, political and social contexts, and an alienation of subjects from the intimacy of their labor processes (Kloppenburg, 2009: 254). Of particular interest here is the critical work which has explicitly positioned the biopolitical paradigm of industrial agriculture not first and foremost as an economic kind of imperialism, but more profoundly as an epistemic and culturally specific kind of imperialism. In his deconstructive analysis of 'rural development' discourse, anthropologist [http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/ Arturo Escobar]&nbsp;emphasizes the role of unjustified assumptions regarding Western science, progress and the economy, particularly as they were mobilized during the Green Revolution by 'a father/savior talking with selfless condescension to a child/native' (1995: 159). He refers to [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/15/norman-borlaug-legacy?INTCMP=SRCH Norman Borlaug, the American crop scientist] that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,&nbsp;who proudly asserted that agricultural science had been able to displace 'an attitude of despair and apathy that permeated the entire social fabric of these countries only a few years ago' (158). In Escobar's analysis, Bourlaug's patronizing judgement reflects the complex social fact that anything outside the market economy, such as the local networks of reciprocity which have always sustained rural livelihoods, have been constructed within the discursive regime of 'development' as posing a (feminized) threat of engulfment and irrationality. <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br>
 
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times; mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">In a related account of the Green Revolution,
Mexican post-development theorist and activist [http://gustavoesteva.org/09/ Gustavo Esteva]&nbsp;characterized the failure of the Green Revolution to bring long-term
productivity and social well-being as much more than a technical failure. In
Mexico, revolutionary agricultural policies which came to support the Green
Revolution had the goal of transforming [http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6709/670936.html 'peasants']</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">&nbsp;into
capitalist farmers for the sake of 'national development'. However, in the end imported machines
could not harvest crops due to local soil conditions and dependence on
fertilizers and irrigation turned out to be both expensive and environmentally
destructive, but worst of all, Esteva says, was that ''campesinos''</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD"> were
turned into passive observers of a process in which their only participation
amounted to carrying bags of fertilizers to the land (1996: 257, 264). This was
not simply a technical mistake, Esteva insists; this was 'knowledge
imperialism', and most profoundly an a ethical failure 'to host the otherness
of the other'. At a time when modernizing narratives of 'development' were
refashioning pre-war colonialist discourse, the use of physicalist and probabilistic
discourse, a purely instrumental conception of nature and work, the
implementation of statistical calculations disconnected from local conditions,
and the reliance on models without recognizing any historical specificity were
all ways of enacting a biopolitical agenda in the service of global capitalism.</span>
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<br> After 30 years of 'deconstructive' interventions into the hegemonic forms of science, it seems clear today that that the epistemic credentials of Western science 'are no longer completely secure' (Kloppenburg, 2009: 260). A 'reconstructive' task is now required, Kloppenburg argues, in orther to show that another agriculture is possible as well as desirable. Disagreements remain over whether science should self-reform yet retain its status as a unique and superior form of knowledge, or whether it should radically transform itself and work on a true dialogue with 'local knowledges'. For Kloppenburg it is very clear that an alternative agricultural paradigm requires that science recognizes its own limits, its own contingent trajectory in a continuous social struggle 'not only to define science in a particular way, but also to exclude other ways of producing knowledge from that definition' (251). In this regard, he warns us that the contest has only started over the meaning of an<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>alternative agriculture, which is above all a contest regarding who will have 'the power to speak authoritatively in that debate, who is to have a voice at all' (2009: 250), and this brings us once again to the theme of biopolitics in the context of neoliberalism.
 
<br>
 
The continuing dominance of a biopolitical approach to social organization, including agriculture, is made evident today by the relation between contemporary life sciences – or rather, technosciences – and neoliberal capitalism. In a period of economic growth based on the extraction of fossil fuels, agriscience was more attuned to geochemical sciences than to the life sciences. Life sciences came to take over the scene of agricultural research only after the oil crises of the 1970s, hand-in-hand with neoliberalism and its new discursive regime. Melinda Cooper (2008) has argued that neoliberalism involves a distinctive form of biopolitics. She has differentiated between welfare or state biopolitics, based on a contract between the state and the laboring body, and neoliberal biopolitics, a project that displaces the welfare contract by eroding its 'constitutive mediations' (9). Such mediations were the gendered boundaries between (paid) production and (unpaid) reproduction, and they ensured that labor and life were not entirely conflated. In other words, the exclusion of female labor from the realm of production in welfare biopolitics was also the model for constructs such as 'human rights' and 'development', two projects closely aligned with but not entirely reducible to the capitalist profit-making imperative. Under neoliberalism, by contrast, the incorporation of reproduction into the sphere of production ultimately eliminates the ontological ground of non-economic values in the discursive organization of the social, including 'life itself' (Franklin, 2000). As Eugene Thacker has pointed out, biotechnology produces 'a body that never stops laboring[, which] is also a biology defined by production' (2005: 38-39). <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br>
 
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times; mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">Biotechnology relocates production 'at the genetic
microbial and cellular level, so that life becomes, literally, annexed within
capitalist processes of accumulation''' ''</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD">(Cooper 2008: 19).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>Cooper's suggestive diagnosis in this regard is that we are living through an era of capitalist delirium which is characterized by an attempt to overcome, through a speculative reinvention of the future, the ecological limits of economic growth. She pays special attention to the resonance between neo-vitalist scientific paradigms and the financialization of the global economy. The understanding of life as intrinsically expansive, non-deterministic, and autopoietic seems to have gone hand-in-hand with the global imposition of the debit form of money as 'a process of continuous autopoiesis, a self-engendering of life from life, without conceivable beginning or end' (35-38). The problem with this more-than-rhetorical shift is the same old problem that was already highlighted by Marx, namely, that the production of life under capitalism is premised on the devaluation, or even destruction, of life itself.</span>
 
<br>
 
The biopolitics of neoliberal technoscience has become an urgent matter of concern across all disciplines. Donna Haraway (1997) famously insisted that while it signals a dangerous penetration of capitalism into the core of 'life itself', technoscience simultaneously provokes a re-politicization of everything that was previously de-politicized through its association with 'nature'. One of the ways in which technoscience re-politicizes nature is by disrupting 'the separation between the technical and the political', 'the separation of expert knowledge from mere opinion as the legitimizing knowledge for ways of life' (Haraway, 1997: 23). Thus, the life sciences have become a crucial site for the mobilization of marginalized knowledges and practices of life which promote care for life in a complex ecological sense – as opposed to the capitalist exploitation of 'life itself'. In sympathy with Haraway's strong call to engage critically, rather than apocalyptically, with technoscience, I would like to suggest here that an ongoing struggle for self-critique in agricultural science is an indication that biopolitics, like capitalism itself, is not a monolithic 'system', nor is it a sort of deterministic 'program'. The life sciences are a hegemonic terrain, and <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">epistemological
critiques of reductionism, novel interdisciplinary and even anti-disciplinary
collaborations, as well as experiments informed by holistic approaches to life,
</span>should all be considered as crucial aspects of them, as happening within the life sciences rather than as somehow occurring 'outside' of them. If we assume that it is possible to live through biopolitics in more or less critical ways, we might do well to consider local agricultural knowledges and livelihoods, particularly as they evolve in tension with mainstream agricultural science, as sources of guidance for what a different, more caring 'management of life' could be, one positioned against professional or disciplinary boundaries.
 
<br>
 
The process of editing this Living Book has been quite a strange experience for me. Most of the material I found in my exploration of open access agricultural science is something I disagree with rather strongly. The dominant arguments seem to confirm that mainstream agricultural science has changed little after thirty years of consistent critique from both academic and activist quarters. Such a finding has left me with the rather unexciting task of having to repeat denunciations that have been made for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>As much as I wish to do something different than just repeat, it so happens that the modern scientific voice of decontextualized rationality is still around, not just in the form of casual opinions that a few random people hold, but as deeply seated and deeply consequential assumptions within agricultural research. One more or less implicit assumption in much of the research I encountered when browsing through scientific databases is that agricultural laborers are scarce, irrelevant or even an obstacle&nbsp;for agriculture. <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br>
 
Where farmers are found to be scarce, researchers propose [http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=530729 tools, such as robots, in order to substitute them].&nbsp;Where farmers cannot not be easily dispensed with, research is concerned with accurately [http://maxwellsci.com/print/ajas/v3-87-93.pdf describing their attitude and behavior] so as&nbsp;to persuade them more effectively to engage in commercial activity,&nbsp;or with developing [http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=530731 tools for improving their productivity] by [http://ojrrp.org/journals/ojrrp/article/view/266/125 improving their knowledge].&nbsp;In such research one seems to hear echoes of post-war&nbsp;[http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=555911 developmentalist narratives],&nbsp;yet one can also observe the displacement of developmentalist biopolitics by an increasing interest in information technologies, including [http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/2/6/1589/pdf global surveillance projects], for the development of a [http://www.sciencedomain.org/abstract.php?iid=42&id=2&aid=50 remotely controlled agriculture of 'precision'].&nbsp;In some cases, the drive to achieve full technological automation is so strong that farmers are implicitly framed as simply [http://www.ijabe.org/index.php/ijabe/article/viewFile/160/82 irrelevant for cutting-edge agricultural research]. More interesting (though not strictly agricultural) pieces of research&nbsp;include a description of the agricultural pilot's [http://www.arquivosdeorl.org.br/conteudo/pdfForl/14-03-09-eng.pdf audiological profile],&nbsp;which suggested to me that the deafening noise of industrial machines such as tractors and planes might have rendered us deaf to what farmers have to say. <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br>
 
The findings I have just summarized indicate that it remains a challenge for agricultural science to acknowledge the value and complexity of farmer-generated knowledge. While about 60% of the world's cultivated land is still farmed by traditional or subsistence methods, mainstream agriscientists continue to regard such methods as 'primitive', and to assume that the economic and technological integration of local farming systems into the global trade system is the rational step towards increased production and social well being (Altieri 2001). [http://agroeco.org/ Agroecologists], by contrast, argue that traditional cropping schemes may contain important ecological clues for the development of an alternative agricultural paradigm. [http://www.agroecology.org/CaseStudies_NCAmerica.html Their research] has foregrounded&nbsp;the complexity, efficiency and overall productivity of traditional cropping systems and methods such as agroforestry, minimum tillage, cover cropping and living mulches. Anthropologists and other ethnoscientists have also found that farmers are keen observers of their natural surroundings and that they skillfully mobilize large bodies of empirical knowledge in their agricultural operations. Moreover, it has become apparent that they are generally eager to innovate and to try out experimental techniques which merit being described as forms of research (see for example González 2001). The serious engagement with such forms of research has contributed since the 1980s to the construction of a 'farmers first approach' that Kloppenburg describes as follows: <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Latest revision as of 17:14, 3 October 2012

AgricultureCover1.jpg
AgricultureCover1.jpg

Agricultural Lessons for the Posthumanities

ISBN: 978-1-60785-253-7

edited by Gabriela Méndez Cota

Introduction: The Posthuman Life of Agriculture

When Foucault introduced the concept of biopolitics, he referred to a historically specific power agenda involving a particular approach to life. This approach was at the root of the modern sciences of biology and political economy, both of which set out to describe, explain and manage their objects of study as abstract processes of production and reproduction. Agricultural science must be situated in relation to the biopolitical agenda of 'applying' the modern scientific approach to the management of social life. The scientification of agriculture took place in the United States towards the end of the 19th century, through a process that entailed both a delegitimation of farmer-generated knowledges and the production of new, modern subjectivities. As farmers became entrepreneurs in need of scientific education and advice, newly trained agronomists devoted themselves to designing fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds with the goal of maximizing yields. Public institutions were created which coordinated agricultural production with both science and trade policy. Agricultural science was thus inseparable from the process which transformed much of US agriculture into transnational agribusiness, and local farming networks all over the world into consumer endpoints of a globalized food industry. (more...)

Readings

Alison G. Power 
Ecosystem Services and Agriculture: Tradeoffs and Synergies
Andrew K. Evers, Amanda Bambrick, Simon Lacombe, Michael C. Dougherty, Matthias Peichl, Andrew M. Gordon, Naresh V. Thevathasan, Joann Whalen and Robert L. Bradley 
Potential Greenhouse Gas Mitigation through Temperate Tree-Based Intercropping Systems
Vincent Thieu, Gilles Billen, Josette Garnier and Marc Benoît 
Nitrogen Cycling in a Hypothetical Scenario of Generalised Organic Agriculture in the Seine, Somme and Scheldt Watersheds
Acácio A. Navarrete, Fabiana S. Cannavan, Rodrigo G. Taketani and Tsiu M. Tsai 
A Molecular Survey of the Diversity of Microbial Communities in Different Amazonian Agricultural Model Systems
Wagner Bettiol, Raquel Ghini, José Abrahao Haddad Galvao, Marcos Antônio Vieira Ligo and Jeferson Luiz de Carvhalo Mineiro 
Soil Organisms in Organic and Conventional Cropping Systems
Chengyun Li, Xiahong He, Shusheng Zhu, Huiping Zhou, Yunyue Wang, Yan Li, Jing Yang, Jinxiang Fan, Jincheng Yang, Guibin Wang, Yunfu Long, Jiayou Xu, Yongsheng Tang, Gaohui Zhao, Jiangrong Yang, Lin Liu, Yan Sun, Yong Xie, Haining Wang and Youyong Zhu 
Crop Diversity for Yield Increase
Ricardo Antonio Marenco and Ávila Maria Bastos Santos 
Crop Rotation Reduces Weed Competition and Increases Chlorophyll Concentration and Rice Yield
Samuel Kilonzo Mutiga, Linnet S. Gohole and Elmada O. Auma 
Agronomic Performance of Collards under Two Intercrops and Varying Nitrogen Application Levels as Assessed Using Land Equivalent Ratios
Gregory A. Jones and Jennifer L. Gillett 
Intercropping with Sunflowers to Attract Beneficial Insects in Organic Agriculture
Cristina A. Faria, Felix L. Wäckers, Jeremy Pritchard, David A. Barrett, Ted C. J. Turlings 
High Susceptibility of Bt Maize to Aphids Enhances the Performance of Parasitoids of Lepidopteran Pests
Andréia S. Guimaraes and José S. Mourao 
Management of Plant Species for Controlling Pests by Peasant Farmers at Lagoa Seca, Paraíba State, Brazil: An Ethnoecological Approach
Julia Quartz 
Creative Dissent with Technoscience in India: The Case of Non-Pesticidal Management (NPM) in Andra Pradesh
Jack Kloppenburg 
Impending Dispossession, Enabling Repossession: Biological Open Source and the Recovery of Seed Sovereignty
Keith Aoki 
"Free Seeds, not Free Beer": Participatory Plant Breeding, Open Source Seeds, and Acknowledging User Innovation in Agriculture
Derek Byerlee and Harvey Jesse Dubin 
Crop Improvement in the CGIAR as a Global Success Story of Open Access and International Collaboration
Laxmi Prasad Pant and Helen Hambly-Odame 
Creative Commons: Non-Proprietary Innovation Triangles in International Agricultural and Rural Development Partnerships

Attributions

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