Another Technoscience is Possible

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The Posthuman Life of Agriculture: Local Knowledges, Open Source Lives

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 than 20 years ago Jack Kloppenburg, a rural sociologist and 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',