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Abstract

The productivity of modern agriculture is a result of a remarkable fusion of technology and science. The emerging skepticism about the role of science in society has led to a questioning of the benefits from technical change in agriculture and there is a rising demand for more effective social control over the development and use of agricultural technology. Agricultural science cannot evade responsibility for the costs as well as the benefits of technical change. But it is in society's interest to let the burden of responsibility rest lightly and to insist that agricultural science maintain its commitment to expanding the productive capacity of the resources used in agricultural production. But society should also insist that agricultural science embrace an agenda that includes a concern for the effects of agricultural technology on the health and safety of agricultural producers; a concern for the nutrition and health of consumers; a concern for the impact of agricultural practices on the aesthetic qualities of both natural and man-made environments; a concern for the quality of life in rural communities; and a concern for the implications of technical choices for the options that will be available in the future. The agricultural science community should, in turn, expect that society will acquire a more sophisticated perception of the contribution of agricultural technology to the balance between man and the natural world. It is also time for the general science community to begin to follow the lead of agricultural science in embracing the fusion of science and technology rather than continuing to hide behind the indefensible intellectual and class barriers that have been retained to protect its privilege and ego from contamination by engineering, agronomy and medicine.

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References

White

Lynn

Jr , Machina Ex DeoiEssays in the Dynamism of Western Culture, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1968; Samuel C. Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 79. St. Martin's Press, New York (1976), This same point has been emphasized by Isaac Asimov, ‘Pure and Impure: The Interplay of Science and Technology’, Saturday Review 6, (June 9, 1979), pp. 22–24, 29; see also Kenneth E. Boulding, The Impact of the Social Sciences, New Brunswick, Rutgers (1966) and N. Bruce Hannay and Robert E. McGinn, ‘The Anatomy of Modern Technology: Prolegomenon to an Improved Public Policy for the Social Management of Technology’. Daedalus 109, pp. 25–53 (Winter 1980). Hannay and McGinn point out that ‘Modern science … is itself obtained with the aid of sophisticated products of modern technology – electron microscopes, computers, spectrographs, and so on. “Modern science as applied technology” is no less true and no more misleading than “modern technology as applied science”’ (p. 39).

It is useful, for the sake of brevity, occasionally to use the term ‘agronomy’ to refer to the whole body of agriculturally related science and technology and ‘agronomists’ to refer to the community of production-oriented agricultural scientists. In the United States the term agronomy has the more narrow connotation of field crop production and management.

For insight into the basis for this relationship see Brewster

John M.

, ‘The Machine Process in Agriculture and Industry,’ J. Farm Econ. 32, pp. 69–81, (February 1950).

In 1943 Iowa State College was forced by Iowa dairy interests and the lowa Farm Bureau to withdraw its Pamphlet Number 5, ‘Putting Dairying on a War Footing’. In this pamphlet its author, agricultural economist O. H. Brownlee, had stated that properly fortified margarine ‘compared favorably with butter’. When the president of the College insisted that the bulletin be retracted, T. W. Schutz (1979 Nobel laureate in Economics), then head of the Economics and Sociology Department at Iowa State College, charged that the College administration was violating academic freedom and resigned. A successful effort in the early 1950s, by Professor W. D. Valleau of the University of Kentucky to develop low-nicotine varieties of tobacco was bitterly attacked by Kentucky farmers because of potential competition with Burley tobacco. A bill was introduced in the Kentucky legislature to limit experimentation and prevent the growing of any type of tobacco that would jeopardize the profitable production of Burley. The bill was defeated after being vigorously opposed by the Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture. These two cases are reviewed in Charles M. Martin, Freedom in Agricultural Education. Chicago, University of Chicago Press (1955), Arno Press reprint (1976).

For a view of the agricultural scientist as a hero, see Stakman

E. C.

, Richard

Bradfield

and Mangelsdorf

Paul C.

, Campaigns Against Hunger, Cambridge, Harvard University Press (1967). For an earlier, and even more heroic view, see Paul de Kruif, Hunger Fighters, New York. Harcourt Brace (1928).

For a useful historical perspective see Edward

Shils

, ‘Faith, Utility and the Legitimacy of Science’, Daedalus 103, pp. 1–15 (Summer 1974).

For an example of romantic criticism, see Wendell

Berry

, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, New York, Avon Books, (1977). For a populist perspective, see Jim Hightower, Hard Tomatoes, Herd Times, Cambridge, Schenkman (1973). For an ideological perspective, see Francis Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins (with Gary Fowler), Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Boston, Houghton Mifflin (1977), Also E. G. Valliantos, Fear in the Countryside: The Control of Agricultural Resources in Poor Countries, Cambridge, Mass, Ballinger (1977); Susan George, How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger, Montclair, NJ, Allanheld, Osman (1977). For reviews of this literature, see Nick Eberstad, ‘Malthusians, Marxists and Missionaries’. Society 17, pp. 29–35 (September/October, 1980), and Charles M. Hardin, ‘Feeding the World: Conflicting Views on Policy’, Agricultural History 53, pp. 787–795 (October, 1979).

This point is developed more fully in Ruttan

Vernon W.

, ‘Induced Institutional Change’, in Induced Innovation: Technology, Institutions and Development, edited by

Binswanger

Hans P.

, Ruttan

Vernon W.

and others, pp. 327–357. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins (1978).

This point is not inconsistent with the views expressed by Hans

Mohr

, ‘The Ethics of Science’, Interdiscipl. Sci. Rev. 4, pp. 45–53 (1979). Mohr notes that ‘…freedom of inquiry … does not necessarily imply freedom in the choice of any particular goal; it implies, however, that the results of scientific inquiry may not be influenced by any factor extrinsic to science’ (p. 48).

10.

National Academy of Sciences , Technology: Process of Assessment and Choice, Washington, US Government Printing Office, July, 1979. Joseph F. Coates, ‘The Role of Formal Models in Technology Assessment’, Technol. Forecast Soc. Change 9, pp. 139–189 (1979); and Vary T. Coates, Technology Assessment in Federal Agencies: 1971–76, Washington, DC, George Washington University Program of Policy Studies on Science and Technology (March 1979). For discussion of some of the limitations of technology assessment see Robert T. Holt, Technology Assessment and Technology Inducement Mechanism’, Am. J. Pol, Sci. 21, pp. 283–301 (1977); Lynn White Jr, Technology Assessment from the Stance of a Medieval Historian’, Technol. Forecast Soc, Change 6, pp. 359–369 (1971); C. Marchetti, ‘A Postmortem Technology Assessment of the Spinning Wheel: The Last Thousand Years’, Technol. Forecast. Soc, Change 13, pp. 91–93 (1979).

11.

The position expressed here is similar to that presented by Steiner

Peter O.

, ‘The Public Sector and the Public Interest’, in The Analysis amd Evaluation of Public ExpendituresiThe PPB System, edited by

Haveman

Robert H.

for the Subcommittee on Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, pp. 13–14. Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office (1969).

12.

For a review of the evidence on rates of return to agricultural research see Evenson

Robert E.

, Waggoner

Paul E.

and Ruttan

Vernon W.

, ‘Economic Benefits from Research: An Example from Agriculture’, Science 205, pp. 1101–1107 (1979).

Agricultural Scientists as Reluctant Revolutionaries

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