This article analyzes Italian research and experimentation on the economic potential of certain plant species in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also providing insight into beekeeping and honey production. It focuses on continuity of method and progress across regimes and on the invisibility of many of the actors involved in the development of agricultural science and food research. Specifically, “continuity” refers to the continuation of certain threads of Old-Regime experimentation by the scientific apparatus put in (...) place during the Napoleonic era. These threads were reworked and strengthened with the new means available to Frenchified Europe. The concept of “invisibility” derives from an expression by Steven Shapin and refers to actors who contributed to the development of agricultural science while remaining in the shadows. These include various types of technicians and members of rural society who supported the scientific work of scholars without receiving overt recognition. Continuity and invisibility were therefore two fundamental components both in the epistemological development of agricultural science and in the improvement of food research. The article analyzes case studies mainly from northern Italy – or rather, the various geopolitical entities existing in this geographical region – during the late Old Regime and the Napoleonic era, comparing them with examples from all over Europe. (shrink)

State patronage and the role of central government in modernization are often cited as the key factors that underpin the development of science in Russia. This paper argues that the development of Russian agricultural science had predominantly local and non-governmental sources of support. Historically Russian agricultural research was funded and promoted through private patronage, but from the middle of the 19th century agricultural societies and community administrations began to sponsor research and promotion of new ideas (...) in the agricultural sector. At the end of the 19th century the majority of initiatives to set up agricultural experiment stations were undertaken on behalf of provincial agricultural societies, supported by local community administrations independent of the state bureaucratic apparatus (zemstvos). During the last two decades of the Russian Empire, agricultural societies and zemstvos became leaders in the modernization of Russian agriculture. Establishing regional experiment stations, and thus promoting development of local knowledge, they provided models for the subsequent governmental activity in this field. In the case of supporting agricultural research and institutionalizing the new discipline of scientific plant breeding, the Russian public led the state, rather than the reverse. (shrink)

Histories of science in modern China often explore their subjects within global or national frameworks. This essay uses data from gazetteers to address the place-based nature of Chinese agricultural science as it developed at smaller geographical scales. Information contained in gazetteers suggests that regional environmental knowledge and site-specific social networks influenced the construction and communication of scientific ideas about farming at the local level. By highlighting these dimensions of knowledge making, this essay demonstrates the benefits of using (...) gazetteers to grapple with the importance of place in Chinese science. (shrink)

Richard P. Haynes, founding editor of _Agriculture and Human Values_, was an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florida. His personal interests in the environmental dimensions of agriculture led him to found the journal in the 1980s with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Later in life, he published on ethical treatment of lab and farm animals. Haynes understood _Agriculture and Human Values_ as a broadly multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary platform for critical studies of agriculture and (...) food systems. As he took over the editorship of _The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics_ in the 1990s, he fashioned it as a complementary outlet for more traditionally philosophical studies of environmental and agricultural topics. (shrink)

The paper deals with the transformation of plant breeding from an agricultural practice into an applied academic science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Germany. The aim is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the relationship between science and technology. After a brief discussion of this debate the first part of the paper examines how pioneers of plant breeding developed their breeding methods and commercially successful varieties. The focus here is on the role (...) of scientific concepts and theories in the agricultural innovation process. The second part turns towards the strategies by which agronomists tried to establish plant breeding as an academic discipline and themselves as the new experts for breeding research and varietal development. Again, the focus is on the interplay of scientific theory and agricultural practice. It is argued that in order to better understand the transformation of plant breeding into an applied academic science we have to take different levels into account, i.e. the levels of organizations, individuals and objects, at which science and technology interact. (shrink)

In 1973, Jim Hightower and his associates at the Agribusiness Accountability Project dropped a bombshell – Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times – on the land-grant college and agricultural science establishments. From the early 1970s until roughly 1990, Hightower-style criticism of and activism toward the public agricultural research system focused on a set of closely interrelated themes: the tendencies for the publicly supported research enterprise to be an unwarranted taxpayer subsidy of agribusiness, for agricultural research and extension (...) to favor large farmers and be disadvantageous for family farmers, for public research to stress mechanization while ignoring the concerns and interests of farm workers, and for the research and extension establishment to ignore rural poverty and other rural social problems. By 1990, however, there had been a quite fundamental restructuring of the agricultural technology opposition movement – one that is not often well recognized. Two overarching changes had occurred. First, agricultural-technology activism had shifted from contesting land-grant/public research priorities and practices to contesting private agribusiness technological priorities and practices. Second, the relatively integrated, overarching Hightower-type opposition had undergone bifurcation into two quite distinct social movements: the agricultural sustainability/local food systems movement on one hand, and the anti-GM food/crop and anti-food-system-globalization movement on the other. In this paper I explore the causes and consequences of these restructurings of the agricultural research and technology opposition movement. Chief among the major factors involved was the fact that “Hightowerism'' involved an ineffectual representational politics. Hightowerist claims – especially the claim that land-grant research was detrimental to family farmers – generated little support among the groups it claimed to represent (particularly “small'' or “family'' farmers). The two successor movements, by contrast, have relatively clear and dependable constituents. Further, the progressive molecularization of agricultural research, which proved to be both an antecedent and consequence of corporate involvement in agricultural research in the US, has decisively changed the issues that are contested by technology activists. Since the age of Hightower, the agricultural technology activist movement has shifted its 1970s and early 1980s emphasis from contesting public sector/land-grant research priorities to contesting private sector activities, particularly genetic engineering, GM crops, and globalization of agricultural technologies and regulatory practices. Even the sustainability/localism wing of the new agricultural technology movement configuration has progressively backed away from contesting public research priorities. The efforts of the sustainable agricultural and localism movement have increasingly focused on quasi-private efforts such as community supported agriculture, green/“value-added'' labeling and marketing strategies, and community food security. Some implications of this increasingly bifurcated, agricultural technology, activist movement configuration in which there is decreased interest in land-grant/public research priorities are discussed. (shrink)

This paper sets out to capture the emergence between 1760 and 1840 of a recognizable science of agriculture in Europe. The first attempts to explain and to theorize husbandry as practiced on the farm emanated from economists and agronomists employing the ‘encyclopedic’ approach of the Enlightenment generation. Despite significant additions to chemical knowledge in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries the task of applying this knowledge to agriculture initially appeared insurmountable. Only in the 1820s and the (...) 1830s were the obstacles gradually removed. A more rigorous approach to experimentation and to quantification evolved, and it was combined with investment in institutions seeking to educate landowners and farmers. As a result of these developments chemists secured pride-of-place above all other professionals in the management of agriculture as the primary food-producing sector of the economy. (shrink)

Excitement about digital agriculture—i.e., expanded reliance on collecting, integrating, analyzing, and applying digital data in agri-food systems—is bringing two different conceptualizations of abstraction into collision and dialogue. Critical agri-food scholars have long expressed concerns about disembedding—or abstracting—agriculture from particular geographies, farmers’ varied interests, and ecological processes. In contrast, in computer science, abstraction is understood as beneficial for taming the complexities of technology and supporting the development of general-purpose tools. In this paper, we compare these very different theorizations of abstraction (...) through an ethnographic case study of the early development of new digital agriculture networking infrastructure. We analyze how the commitments to abstraction in computer science relate to and depart from critical agri-food studies' critiques of decontextualization and disembedding. The study is based on a long-term collaboration between computer networking researchers and social scientists. Our findings indicate that the commitment to abstraction by computer network scientists leads them to engage minimally with critical agri-food studies’ concerns regarding historical processes of agricultural industrialization and their effect on farm size, the labor process, and the environment, but produces deep engagement with concerns regarding corporate control of innovation trajectories. We find, however, that the technologists focus on open innovation and vendor lock-in in order to expand the scale, scope, and pace of innovation, rather than to advance social justice and environmental sustainability, demonstrating that openness can be understood and practiced in various ways. Through integrated treatment of abstraction in computer science and critical agri-food studies, this article highlights opportunities and constraints for interdisciplinary analysis pertaining to the development of digital agriculture. Through ethnographic analysis of digital agriculture research and development, we identify mechanisms through which contemporary innovation processes are likely to reinforce the social, economic, and ecological relations of conventional agriculture. (shrink)

This article is based on the author's extensive research on the missionaries to Tibet from the Disciples of Christ USA, and discusses various missionary efforts to transmit scientific and practical knowledge such as medicine, building, and agriculture in Eastern Tibet from 1904–1919. It shows that American missionaries played a prominent and distinctive role in the dissemination of scientific and practical knowledge as a result of their hard work and wisdom. In this sense, they made an important contribution to the development (...) of Tibetan society and the modernization movement in early twentieth-century Eastern Tibet. (shrink)

As the primary ingredient in gunpowder, saltpeter was an extraordinarily important commodity in the early modern world. Historians of science and technology have long studied its military applications but have rarely focused on its uses outside of warfare. Due to its potential effectiveness as a fertilizer, saltpeter was also an integral component of experimental agricultural reform movements in the early modern period and particularly in seventeenth-century England. This became possible for several reasons: the creation of a (...) thriving domestic saltpeter production industry in the second half of the sixteenth century; the development of vitalist alchemical theories that sought a unified explanation for the “growth” of minerals, metals, and plants; the rise of experimental natural philosophy; and the mid-seventeenth-century dominance of the English East India Company in the saltpeter trade, which allowed agricultural reformers to repurpose domestically produced saltpeter in agriculturally productive ways. This paper argues that the Hartlib Circle – a loose network of natural philosophers and social reformers – adopted vitalist matter theories and the practical, experimental techniques of alchemists to transform agriculture into a more productive enterprise. Though their grandiose plans never came to fruition, their experimental trials to develop artificial fertilizers played an early role in the origins and development of saline chemistry, agronomy, and the British Agricultural Revolution. (shrink)

Tracing the History of a Super‐Category: The ‘Empirical’ in German Agricultural Improvement and Science around 1800. In accordance with some historians of philosophy, this paper claims that Kant′s critical philosophy can be seen as a watershed between the largely negative and ascriptive term ‘empiric’ applied during the early modern period and the more self‐referential term ‘empiricist’ of the modern period. I will examine the usage and polemical function of the ‘empirical’ label in German agricultural improvement, and (...) will point out its largely negative connotation with respect to agricultural knowledge before 1810. I will then go on to demonstrate how the most prominent founding figure of modern agricultural science in Germany, Albrecht Daniel Thaer (1752–1828), used the conceptual watershed moment as a means to his own academic and polemical ends. Whereas Thaer's opponents, cameralist authors such as Johann Beckmann (1739–1811) and Friedrich Benedict Weber (1774–1848), remained on one side of the watershed, Thaer's reasoning embraced both connotations of the ‘empirical’, and did so in significant ways. My conclusion is that the conceptual transition of the term reflects societal conflicts and social change on a broader level. Thus, the general historiographical claim of this paper is that conceptual histories are a useful and prolific tool of historical research. (shrink)

Recent discourse in the field of participatory agricultural research has focused on how to blend various forms and intensities of stakeholder participation with quality agricultural science, moving beyond the simple “farmer-first” ideology of the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet, most existing frameworks of participation in agricultural research still adhere to a linear typology of participatory research with an inherent claim of “the more participation, the better.” In this article, we propose a new framework that looks (...) at participatory research elements along different dimensions and attributes and thus takes into account the diversity and dynamics of agricultural research projects. The framework provides a basis for agricultural researchers engaged in participatory processes with local stakeholders to decide for which issues and in which phases certain participatory elements could be used in a specific research context. Rather than aiming at maximizing the adoption of participatory methods, it can thus become a tool for optimizing the use of participatory approaches in agricultural research. We conclude that this framework can be a starting point for a more thoughtful integration of participatory elements in agricultural research projects that does justice to the multidimensional and dynamic nature of stakeholder participation in varying contexts. (shrink)

Gene editing in agriculture and food (GEAF) is a nascent development with few products and is unfamiliar among the wider US public. GEAF has garnered significant praise for its potential to solve for a variety of agronomic problems but has also evoked controversy regarding safety and ethical standards of development and application. Given the wake of other agribiotechnology debates including GMOs (genetically modified organisms), this study made use of 36 in-depth key interviews to build the first U.S. based typology of (...) proponent and critic priorities for shaping public trust in GEAF actors and objects. Key organizational actors provide early and foundational messaging, which is likely to contribute heavily to public salience, comprehension, and decision-making as potential consumers reflect upon their experiences, envision future outcomes, and consider the reputation of those trying to influence them. As is documented in our results, the trust-building priorities of these groups often stand in opposition to one another and are influenced by distinct motivations for how the public will come to trust or distrust GEAF actors and objects as more products are developed and enter the market. (shrink)

This article argues that the goals of agricultural research in poor countries have changed substantially over the last four decades. In particular they have broadened from the early (and narrow) emphasis on food production to a much wider agenda that includes poverty alleviation, environmental degradation, and social inclusion. Conversely, agricultural research systems have proved remarkably resistant to the concomitant need for changes in research focus. As a result many, at both the national and international level, are under (...) great strain. In terms of public policy the article goes on to suggest that shortcomings of existing conceptual approaches to technology development could be supplemented by adopting analytical principles that view innovation in systemic terms. An approach where flows of knowledge between institutional nodes is a key to innovative performance (the “National Systems of Innovation” approach) is suggested as one such conceptual framework that might help supplement conventional policy analysis. (shrink)

Artificial insemination was the first conceptive technology to be widely used in agriculture. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century all cows in England and Wales were mated to bulls, by the end of the 1950s 60% conceived through artificial insemination. By then a national network of ‘cattle breeding centres’ brought AI within the reach of every farmer. In this paper I explore how artificial insemination, which had few supporters in the 1920s and 1930s, was transformed into an ‘indispensable’ (...) method for reproducing cattle. I discuss the factors that made organised AI possible , including changes in cultures of cattle breeding, novel State involvement in bovine reproduction, the rise of new ‘animal breeding research’ centres at Cambridge, Edinburgh and Reading universities, war preparations and central planning by the Milk Marketing Board . I go on to show that the unprecedented focus on bovine reproduction set in motion by the AI centres effectively generated new networks of reproductive research, through these the ‘biopower’ of the farm was incorporated into the clinic. The example of AI shows that by combining the history of reproductive technology in agriculture and medicine we can give a richer account of modern reproduction. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century, new varieties of flowers were created in Istanbul’s many agricultural spaces. At the same time, new literary genres related to flower breeding appeared: technical “how-to” manuals, which derived from an earlier tradition of agricultural treatises; encyclopedias of the flower varieties created in Istanbul; and biographical dictionaries of Istanbul’s flower breeders. Such texts, which typically bear the designation Şükūfe-nāme (Books on Flowers), attempt to prescribe note-taking habits, agricultural timelines, and observational techniques. Varieties of flowers (...) with various shapes, sizes, and colors are attributed to the work of individual local breeders. This essay explores the role of seeds in this rich textual production in Istanbul. As things that are mobile yet can take root, seeds became objects of study during what was an era of heightened exchange and mobility in seventeenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. In contrast to the view holding that the history of flower seeds unfolded primarily in Ottoman exchanges with Western Europe, the case of Şükūfe-nāme works shows that seeds were technological objects with local histories. (shrink)

At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the 19th, Spain and the Italian States contributed to the development of European agricultural science and the improvement of manufacturing. They collaborated with each other and reworked the most advanced models of France, Central Europe and Great Britain. Despite their somewhat less prosperous economic status, they demonstrated great originality in research and experimentation. In this process, botanical knowledge served as a starting point for a new epistemological path. Through (...) three case studies – the botanists Antonio José Cavanilles and Domenico Nocca, and the agriculturist Filippo Re – my article analyses how Spanish and Italian naturalists and learned individuals contributed to forming the concept of ‘economic botany’ through the exchange of seeds, plant specimens, books, journals, and – more in general – opinions, becoming germinal forces in a large transnational network. (shrink)

: Though many are agreed that "technoscience" is a significant phenomenon, little systematic attention has yet been paid to the circumstances under which it has emerged. Technoscience is conceptualized here as the outcome of a process of convergence in which technological knowledge acquires many of the characteristics of scientific knowledge while the latter shifts in the opposite direction. The analytical problem is then a matter of understanding why such "drift" has occurred at particular times and places. The drift of higher (...) technical education toward science has been observed in a variety of domains including engineering and medicine, but in this paper I identify such a trend in late nineteenth and early twentieth century agricultural education, with particular reference to Bavaria. The process is interpreted using a model of institutional dynamics loosely based upon Bourdieu's concept of the academic "field.". (shrink)

Research on advanced biopreservation — technologies that include, for example, partial freezing, supercooling, and vitrification with nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming — is proceeding at a rapid pace, potentially affecting many areas of medicine and the life sciences, food, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Given the breadth and depth of its medical, scientific, and corresponding social impacts, advanced biopreservation is poised to emerge as a disruptive technology with real benefits, but also ethical challenges and risks. Early engagement with potentially affected (...) groups can help navigate possible societal barriers to adoption of this new technology and help ensure that emerging capabilities align with the needs, desires, and expectations of a broad range of interested parties. (shrink)

Efforts to bring science into early 19th century breeding practices in Central Europe, organised from Brno, the Hapsburg city in which Mendel would later turn breeding experiments into a body of timeless theory, are here considered as a significant prelude to the great discovery. During those years prior to Mendel's arrival in Brno, enlightened breeders were seeking ways to regulate the process of heredity, which they viewed as a force to be controlled. Many were specialising in sheep breeding (...) for the benefit of the local wool industry while others were showing an interest in commercial plants, especially fruit trees and vines, and later cereals. Breeders explained their problems in regulating heredity in terms of climatic influences disruption due to crossing sports or saltations. Practical experience led them to the concepts of 'inheritance capacity' and the 'mutual elective affinity' of parents. The former was seen to differ among individuals and also among traits; the latter was proposed as a means of adding strength to heredity. The breeders came to recognise that traits might be hidden and yet transmitted as a 'potential' to future generations. They also grew to understand that heredity would be strengthened when a quality was 'fixed' within a lineage by 'pure blood relations.' Continued selection of the desired quality might then lead to 'a higher perfection.' But the ultimate 'physiological' question about breeding, 'what is inherited and how?,' found no answer. Major figures in this development included Abbot Napp, the one who asked this question and who was due to receive Mendel into the monastery in 1843, and Professor Diebl whose lectures on agriculture and natural science at the Brno Philosophical Institute Mendel would attend in 1846. Here we analyse their progress in theorizing about breeding up until about 1840. In discussing this development, we refer to certain international contacts, especially with respect to information transfer and scientific education, within the wider context of the late Enlightenment. (shrink)

Summary Ferdinand von Mueller (1825–96), the German-born Government Botanist of Victoria from 1853 until his death, and concurrently Director of the Melbourne Botanic Garden from 1857 until 1873, was a prolific systematic botanist, but also heavily involved in public educational activities. He conceived of the Garden as an educative place of recreation, but ultimately lost control over it. His loss did not stop his popular writing and lecturing, especially in areas related to the application of botany in horticulture, agriculture, and (...) forestry. The structure of his introductory school text—very different from the intensely logical grammar-like botany texts of the period—owed much to his political masters, but it is characterized by careful attention to language and locality. Mueller's work represents a consistent and pervasive example of attention to the ‘public understanding of science’ that resonates with the concerns of early twenty-first-century funders of scientific research. (shrink)

By bringing together information in published and unpublished works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, notably Hutton's unpublished manuscript the ‘Elements of Agriculture’, it is possible to augment our meagre knowledge of Hutton's agricultural activities. His decision to farm is discussed, as are his time as a student of agriculture in East Anglia and on the Continent , his life as a farmer at Slighhouses in Berwickshire , his research after he returned to Edinburgh , and his (...) opinions on the role of government in agricultural affairs. The section on Slighhouses deals not only with Hutton's agricultural experiments and improvements, but also with his personal life, travel, and scientific studies. Investigation shows that his interest in agriculture gave impetus to his studies in other disciplines, and that his years as a farmer were ones of great intellectual activity which laid the foundation for many of his future achievements, particularly in geology. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded international expeditions with the aim of finding plant specimens for introduction into the agricultural landscape and the new experimental projects in hybridization. One such agricultural explorer, noted for his eponymous lemon, was Frank Nicholas Meyer, an immigrant from the Netherlands whose expeditions in Asia have brought to the United States celebrated fruit and toxic weeds. Neither professional botanists nor farmers, plant hunters like Meyer worked (...) by taking advantage of historical allegiances to academic programs, while leaning on the authority of their newer national institutions. In addition to plants, through photographs that transposed Chinese landscapes to U.S. environmental counterparts, Meyer contributed to the imagination of the agricultural promise of the American West. The era of these plant explorers has ended but their material trace remains in a variety of spaces and modes of existence that have hitherto been disregarded. Reading Meyer’s letters shows the authority and discipline behind his transformation from gardener’s apprentice to professional plant collector. I argue that photographs and plants are understudied material traces that enable historians to re-examine the means by which credit was received, given, and exchanged. By drawing together these traces, I chart the continued importance of exploration and collection in the twentieth century and show the epistemic continuity between nineteenth-century natural history and twentieth-century experimental science. (shrink)

The shift from a traditional indigenous female agriculture to a new male agriculture in Iroquois culture was facilitated by the teachings of the early 19th century Seneca prophet and chief, Handsome Lake. This shift resulted in the disempowerment of women and occurred during a period of crises for the Iroquois; it was heavily influenced by exogenous pressures that, mediated by Handsome Lake's Code, led not only to a change of sex roles in agriculture but also to a shift in (...) family structure toward the patriarchal family and to a change of ideology toward a patriarchal monotheism. Previously, Iroquois life and ideology had stressed a complementarity or balance of powers between the sexes. Handsome Lake's Code also retained certain aspects of the older Iroquois lifestyle and ideology. The crises undergone by the Iroquois might have been met differently, without the disempowerment of women, had it not been for exogenous influences. (shrink)

The Reverend Dr John Beale, FRS, DD, and chaplain to Charles II, carried out a vigorous campaign in the early Royal Society for the reform of agriculture, trade, and public education-reforms which signalled his continuing commitment to the ideas not only of Bacon, but of Hartlib and Comenius as well. In addition to promoting orchard plantations and expanded commercial horticulture, he collaborated with Evelyn, Oldenburg, and Houghton to publish or publicize items on the improvement of agriculture and the national (...) economy. His later writings, including the unfinished manifesto ‘From Utopia’, also identify the ‘mercantilist’ thought of Thomas Mun as a crucial link in Beale's alignment of technology, socioeconomic reform, and the religious and ethical values of Christian humanism. (shrink)

The high levels of land use, inputs, and investment, along with the specific forms of organization and management that characterized Cuba's state extensive growth model during the 1980s, could not overcome the challenges posed by the integrated care required by the sugarcane crop and corresponding industrial activities. Starting in 1993, large state farms have been converted into Basic Units of Cooperative Production with some degree of autonomy. Although first-year production results are not satisfactory, it is too early to evaluate (...) their performance. Their establishment, however, is a step in the right direction to alleviate the problems that the previous forms of organization and management inherent to the state extensive growth model were unable to solve. (shrink)

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of the discipline of genetics. It is striking how many female scientists were contributing to this new field at the time. At least three female pioneers succeeded in becoming professors: Kristine Bonnevie (Norway), Elisabeth Schiemann (Germany) and the Tine Tammes (The Netherlands). The question is which factors contributed to the success of these women's careers? At the time women were gaining access to university education it had become quite the norm for (...) universities to be sites for teaching and research. They were still expanding: new laboratories were being built and new disciplines were being established. All three women benefited from the fact that genetics was considered a new field promising in terms of its utility to society; in the case of Tammes and Schiemann in agriculture and in the case of Bonnevie in eugenics. On the other hand, the field of genetics also benefited from the fact that these first female researchers were eager for the chance to work in science and wanted to make active contributions. They all worked and studied in environments which, although different from one another, were positive towards them, at least at the start. Having a patron was generally a prerequisite. Tammes profited from her teacher's contacts and status. Bonnevie made herself indispensable through her success as a teacher and eventually made her position so strong that she was no longer dependent on a single patron. The case of Schiemann adds something new; it shows the vulnerability of such dependency. Initially, Schiemann's teacher had to rely on the first generation of university women simply because he was unable to attract ambitious young men to his institute. In those early, uncertain years of the new discipline, male scientists tended to choose other, better established, and more prestigious disciplines. However, when genetics itself had become an established field, it also became more attractive to men. Our case studies also demonstrate that a new field at first relatively open to women closes its doors to them once it becomes established. (shrink)

ABSTRACTKey figures in the founding years of the United States of America were part of the first American learned agricultural society, known as the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. Its members were georgic farmers who set out to describe, explore and explain agricultural processes by practical experiences, observations, and theories written in British books. Those theories, however, did not provide any reason for the widespread agricultural practice in Pennsylvania of using plaster as fertilizer, which was German in (...) origin. Although imports were heavily tariffed and later even banned, plaster became, and remained, a top commodity in America. In order to keep agricultural businesses and investments afloat, several members of the PSPA began to scientifically justify the application of plaster fertilization. In so doing, they incorporated chemical theories and methods to both their agricultural practices and investigations. Thus, I argue, they acquired and developed an agrochemical knowledge that was mainly determined by a material history of plaster. Their knowledge was new, unique and more practicable in comparison to the British knowledge in this sector. Eventually, it was through the newly developed knowledge by PSPA members that contributed to the formation of agricultural chemistry as a science in its own respect. (shrink)

Historians and cultural critics face special challenges when treating the nonhuman natural world in the medieval and early modern periods. Their most daunting problem is that in both the visual and written records of the time, nature seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. In the broadest sense, nature was everywhere, for it was vital to human survival. Agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and the patterns of human settlement all have their basis in natural settings. Humans also marked personal, community, (...) and seasonal events by natural occurrences and built their cultural explanations around the workings of nature, which formed the unspoken backdrop for every historical event and document of the time. Yet in spite of the ubiquity of nature's continual presence in the physical surroundings and the artistic and literary cultures of these periods, overt discussion of nature is often hard to find. Until the sixteenth century, responses to nature were quite often recorded only in the course of investigating other subjects. In a very real sense, nature went without saying. As a result, modern scholars analyzing the concept of nature in the history of medieval and early modern Europe must often work in deeply interdisciplinary ways. This challenge is deftly handled by the contributors to Engaging with Nature, whose essays provide insights into such topics as concepts of animal/human relationships; environmental and ecological history; medieval hunting; early modern collections of natural objects; the relationship of religion and nature; the rise of science; and the artistic representations of exotic plants and animals produced by Europeans encountering the New World. "As scholars of medieval and early modern Europe increasingly embrace environmental perspectives and animal studies, Engaging with Nature will be recognized as a landmark collection in the field. Taken together, the essays in this volume provide a synthetic overview of critical developments in the many disciplines that are now incorporating the approaches of natural and environmental studies. Each essay represents a substantial advance in scholarship and thought in its particular field. This is an essential collection for literary and cultural historians, and for historians of economy and society, art and ideas." --Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania "Engaging with Nature vividly captures the breadth and depth of human interactions with the natural world in premodern Europe. Its multidisciplinary approach generates new questions about how Europeans understood and connected with nature and delves into issues that will interest the specialist and the general reader alike. The book challenges readers to rethink not just the history of human engagement with nature but also the many ways the past has influenced our modern conceptions of ecology and environment." --James Masschaele, Rutgers University "This substantial collection of articles is far more than a response to current obsessions with climate change. It is a thought-provoking demonstration of the inter-disciplinary character of research on medieval history and culture. Students of medieval and early-modern society and economy, literature, philosophy, and art, will find much that is new in these essays, and much to provoke their own thinking about the vexed relationship of human societies with their natural surroundings." --Fredric Cheyette, Emeritus professor of history, Amherst College "Engaging with Nature is a deeply pleasurable volume to read. Using an incredible range of primary and secondary sources, the authors richly realize the methodological promise inherent in the emergent field of medieval and pre-modern studies on the history of nature." --Kathleen Biddick, Temple University "Engaging with Nature is a collection of impeccable scholarship that will make a highly original contribution to the emergent field of medieval and pre-modern studies on the history of nature." --Claire Sponsler, University of Iowa. (shrink)

John Millar's Origin of the Distinction of Ranks contains one of the first extensive and systematic discussions of the status of women in different societies. In this paper I attempt to show first that a combi nation of circumstances associated with the teaching of moral philos ophy at Glasgow and with the reform of Scots law undertaken by Lord Kames made the status of women a critical problem for Millar. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that Millar drew heavily upon the (...) resources of associationist psychology to explain how female status changed from hunting to pastoral to agricultural to commercial societies and that in doing so he diverged substantially from the perspectives developed by his mentor, Adam Smith. Finally, in view of Millar's extraordinarily positive reputation throughout Europe prior to the French Revolution and in view of the potential relevance of his analysis to early feminism and to mid-19th-century anthropological discussions of early matri archy, I seek to account for why his work was virtually ignored from around 1802 to 1960. (shrink)

British biologist and science populariser J. B. S. Haldane was known as a contrarian, whose myriad ideas and beliefs would shift to oppose whomever he chose to argue with. Yet Haldane's support for synthetic food remained remarkably stable throughout his life. This article argues that Haldane's engagement with synthetic food during the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by his frustration with the status and direction of scientific research in Britain. Drawing upon the Haldane Papers, I reconstruct how Haldane's interest (...) in synthetic food emerged from the biochemical and physiological optimism of the early 20th century. His mid-20th-century writings were an opportunity for Haldane to voice his political opinions. He attempted to erase the conceptual divide between farm and factory, maintained that food shortages were a capitalist construct, and criticised British colonialism. By pointing out the failure of existing economic systems and governments to develop synthetic food, Haldane made the case that food production should be placed under the control of biologists. (shrink)

In the past thirty years, monumental archaeological discoveries related to the oldest temple complexes in Asia and Europe have emerged on the global cultural stage. In 1995, the ancient temple complex of Göbekli Tepe, dating to the 9th millennium BC, was discovered in southeastern Türkiye. Seventeen years after the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, in 2012, an Eneolithic temple of the Trypillia culture, the Nebelivka Temple, was excavated in present-day Ukraine, dating to the 4th millennium BC. Today, both temple complexes are (...) recognized as the oldest religious centers in Asia and Europe, respectively. The findings from Göbekli Tepe and the Nebelivka Temple, along with accompanying materials, extend far beyond archaeology. They shed light on the history, culture, and religion of prehistoric times. It is the ancient religion that establishes connections between the two temple complexes, allowing us, as this study reveals, to transcend the material, seemingly disparate archaeological facts to understand the general characteristics of an organized religious system of the early agricultural type. This paper explores some specific similarities between the two temple complexes and their cultures overall. Both temples exhibit a shared spatial arrangement of key structural elements, and there is ideological affinity in the iconographic themes, symbols, and artifacts that were not used in other world cultures. This comparative analysis reveals patterns of religious interactions and parallels across different regions and even subcontinents over a significant period. In this study, the author comprehensively highlights the features of the oldest forms of religiosity, providing valuable information on the genesis and evolution of beliefs inherent to organized early agricultural communities. Such a specification of “Neolithic religion,” demonstrating signs of a global phenomenon in the ancient world, is a highly promising direction for modern science, relevant both for research in the Near East and European civilization. This research enriches our understanding of ancient cultures and provides valuable material for contemplating the role of religion in the development of human society as a whole, opening new perspectives for further scientific inquiry in this field. (shrink)

Agricultural modernisation is a longstanding goal of China’s Party-state. Since the early 2000s, it has pursued this goal through policies designed to facilitate land consolidation and support the expansion of large agricultural enterprises – ‘New Agricultural Operators’ (NAOs). In this paper we explore the effect of these policies on the livelihoods of a cohort of smallholder orange growers in the mountainous regions of Hubei province and the local political economy. An analysis of data from a 2019 (...) survey of 266 households and interviews with villagers, agribusiness executives, cooperative leaders, and government officials, we find smallholder farmers are earning good incomes as independent commodity producers, withstanding attempts by local officials at land consolidation, and bypassing NAOs to self-determine their own modes of production and exchange. Our results speak to the ongoing debate about the future of smallholder farming in China, identify the strengths and limitations of recent state-centric analyses of agrarian transition, and re-iterate the pitfalls of the central government’s agricultural modernisation agenda. (shrink)

This paper examines the history of Japanese genetics in the 1920s to 1950s as seen through the work of Hitoshi Kihara, a prominent wheat geneticist as well as a leader in the development of the discipline in Japan. As Kihara's career illustrates, Japanese genetics developed quickly in the early twentieth century through interactions with biologists outside Japan. The interactions, however, ceased due to the war in the late 1930s, and Japanese geneticists were mostly isolated from outside information until the (...) late 1940s. During the isolation in wartime and under the postwar U.S. Occupation, Kihara adapted to political changes. During wartime, he developed a research institute focusing on applied biology of various crops, which conformed to the national need to address food scarcity. After the war, he led the campaign for the establishment of a national institute of genetics and negotiated with American Occupation officers. The Americans viewed this Japanese effort with suspicion because of the rising popularity of the controversial theory of the Russian agronomist, Trofim Lysenko, in Japan. The institute was approved in 1949 partly because Kihara was able to bridge the gap between the American and Japanese sides. With Kihara's flexible and generous leadership, Japanese genetics steadily developed, survived the wartime, and recovered quickly in the postwar period. The article discusses Kihara's interest in cytoplasmic inheritance and his synthetic approach to genetics in this political context, and draws attention to the relation between Kihara's genetics and agricultural practice in Japan. (shrink)

This book examines the long term economic growth that has raised the West's material living standards to levels undreamed of by counterparts in any previous time or place. The authors argue that this growth has been driven by technological revolutions that have periodically transformed the West's economic, social and political landscape over the last 10,000 years and allowed the West to become, until recently, the world's only dominant technological force. Unique in the diversity of the analytical techniques used, the book (...) begins with a discussion of the causes and consequences of economic growth and technological change. The authors argue that long term economic growth is largely driven by pervasive technologies now known as General Purpose. They establish an alternative to the standard growth models that use an aggregate production function and then introduce the concept of GPTs, complete with a study of how these technologies have transformed the West since the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. Early modern science is given more importance than in most other treatments and the 19th century demographic revolution is studied with a combination of formal models of population dynamics and historical analysis. The authors argue that once sustained growth was established in the West, formal models can shed much light on its subsequent behaviour. They build non-conventional, dynamic, non-stationary equilibrium models of GPT-driven growth that incorporate a range of phenomena that their historical studies show to be important but which are excluded from other GPT models in the interests of analytical tractability. The book concludes with a study of the policy implications that follow from their unique approach. (shrink)

The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the journal _Agriculture and Human Values_ provided a crucial intellectual space for the early transdisciplinary critique of the industrial agrifood system. This paper describes that process and presents the concept of “The Doctors of Agrifood Studies” as a metaphor for the key role critical agrifood social scientists played in documenting the unsustainability of conventional agriculture and working to create an alternative, ethical, sustainable agrifood system. After the introduction, the paper details the (...) “Critical Turn” in agrifood studies, followed by a reconsideration of my “Four Questions” framework, focusing on the current tension between the food security and food sovereignty discourses and movements. (shrink)

RésuméNous étudions dans quelle mesure la Voie lactée a été utilisée comme outil d'orientation au début de la période islamique couvrant du 8e au 15e siècle, avec un accent sur la première moitié de cette période. Nous comparons les textes de trois auteurs au cours de trois périodes différentes et donnons des commentaires détaillés sur leur contenu astronomique et traditionnel. Le texte d'al-Marzūqī résume les informations sur la Voie lactée proposées par l'astronome et géographe ʾAbū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī. Le texte indique (...) clairement que dans certaines régions, la Voie lactée pourrait être utilisée comme guide géographique pour déterminer la direction approximative vers une région terrestre ou la direction de la prière. Au 15e siècle, le célèbre navigateur Aḥmad b. Māǧid décrit la Voie lactée dans ses instructions nautiques. Il démontre fréquemment que la Voie lactée sert de guide pour trouver des constellations et des étoiles utiles pour une navigation précise sur terre et sur mer. D'autre part, dans sa description de la Voie lactée, Ibn Qutayba cite un vers du poète Ḏū al-Rumma également mentionné par al-Marzūqī. La Voie lactée y est utilisée pour indiquer les heures chaudes de l’été durant lesquelles voyager dans le désert était particulièrement difficile. Par conséquent, la Voie lactée était utile pour l'orientation dans l'espace et le temps et a été utilisée pour l'agriculture et à des fins de navigation. (shrink)

Vertical farming is a rapidly expanding type of indoor controlled environment agriculture whose promises have attracted widespread praise and considerable early-stage capital in recent years. Among vertical farming’s many claimed benefits, per-area productivity is frequently mentioned, proposing crop yields at least two orders of magnitude higher than outdoor field agriculture. These extremely high yields form the basis for a theory of land use change whereby yield-increasing technologies reduce or reverse the expansionary demands of lower-yielding farms, retaining or returning those (...) areas to “wild nature”. In a sensational articulation of this kind of intensification, from 2007 to 2017 many vivid proposals portrayed centrally located skyscraper farms as a key strategy for building self-sufficient cities. This skyscraper articulation of vertical farming captured the public imagination and led to substantial investment into contemporary vertical farming facilities, the majority of which are in large suburban high-ceiling single-story warehouses. This paper traces the politics of vertical farming’s land-sparing narratives beginning early in the twentieth century, with a closer analysis of two contrasting historical examples: Othmar Ruthner’s 1960s tower greenhouses, which closely resemble the imaginary skyscraper farms of the 2010s; and Noel Davis’ 1980s PhytoFarms, which more closely resembles the well-funded warehouse vertical farms of the 2020s. This analysis suggests that, despite their high yields, the extremely high capital investments needed to build the precise controlled environments of today’s vertical farms preclude the profitable production of staple crops, rendering them unlikely to fulfil their land-sparing promises. (shrink)

In the early 2000s, the development of local food systems in advanced industrial countries has expanded beyond creation and support of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture farms and projects to include targeted Buy Local Food campaigns. Non-governmental groups in many U.S. places and regions have launched such campaigns with the intent of motivating and directing consumers toward more local food purchasing in general. This article examines the current manifestations and possibilities for social justice concerns in Buy Local Food (...) campaigns, by considering them within the more general category of “selective patronage“ campaigns. Historical campaign examples, such as Buy Union, Buy American, and Buy Black campaigns, offer instructive comparisons to contemporary consumer campaigns promoting local food. Through examining the construction of threats, intended beneficiaries, products to be avoided, and those to be preferentially selected, the paper demonstrates how selective patronage campaigns have emphasized social justice needs and concerns for designated groups in ways that have been potentially exclusionary of other disadvantaged groups and thus undermining of social justice more broadly. As a contemporary instance of “selective patronage,“ Buy Local Food campaigns exhibit similar contradictory impulses, which are intensified by the conceptual and practical pitfalls in designating “local.“ The article concludes by considering how the challenges and prospects for commitments to social justice in local food consumer campaigns reinforce the importance of emerging initiatives centered on domestic fair trade. (shrink)

Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) devoted more than 10 years of his life to developing a science of plants and vegetation, a project in which observation (often at the microscopic level) and experimentation played a prominent role. Grew started by composing a natural history of plants that was concerned with their anatomical structure and functioning, but, as I suggest, he also aimed to use observations and experiments to develop an experimental science that investigated the causes and principles of vegetation. Apart (...) from studying the structure of plants, Grew also treated them as instruments in which different chemical operations took place (such as filtration, digestion, fermentation, and the separation of particles of matter). At a methodological level, the science of plants and vegetation is a project based on experimental comparisons, variations, and extensions that, in some cases, led Grew to revise his explicative hypothesis. (shrink)

I start my essay by recalling the resistance at my university towards some groundbreaking results from environmental and global food production research in the early 1960s, when I was a student in agricultural sciences. I describe this resistance as academic inertia originating from group think in the scientific community. I argue that the problems we face today in our search for sustainable development on a global level require a long-term and broad systems approach in research. I conclude that (...) the predominant scientific paradigm, which I define as the control paradigm, is insufficient given its inbuilt reductionist bias. We need the complement of a paradigm entailing a holistic perspective, which I call the co-existence paradigm. I explore how academic inertia and an increasingly competitive culture in the academic world counteract this development. Students at Uppsala University have managed to cross the boundaries of academic inertia in this area by establishing a Center for Environment and Development Studies which pursues a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective. The student-run center, called Cemus, has successfully acted as a force for renewal in academia for two decades. I describe how the center works and suggest that Cemus represents a model for institutionalizing renewal in academia that fills an essential function and is applicable for any university in a democratic society. (shrink)

In common with much of the Western world, agrarianism—valuing farmers and agricultural activity as intrinsically worthwhile, noble, and contributing to the strength of the national character—runs through Australian culture and politics. Agrarian sentiments and attitudes have been identified through empirical research and by inference from analysis of political debate, policy content, and studies of media and popular culture. Empirical studies have, however, been largely confined to the US, with little in the way of recent re-evaluations of, or developments from, (...) early work. This paper reports on research that seeks quantitative empirical evidence for the existence of agrarianism in the Australian community and seeks to identify its core characteristics. Using a purpose-designed sub-set of items within a large, omnibus-style survey of regional and rural Australia, we demonstrate that agrarianism exists as a scientifically quantifiable concept identifiable through responses to four key propositions: that Australians should support policies aimed at improving the position of the agricultural industries; that working in agriculture and associated industries brings out the best in people; that agricultural producers make a major contribution to environmental protection and biodiversity conservation; and that the development of agriculture in Australia contributed to the development of the national character. We found very little variation in the degree to which different demographic groupings agree with agrarianism. Older people, farmers, and non-Indigenous Australian-born respondents were among those who were statistically significantly more likely to agree with the defining propositions of agrarianism, but their scores were only very slightly higher than those of other sub-populations in the sample. (shrink)

For centuries, China’s farmers practiced agriculture in ways that sustained a high level of food production without depleting or deteriorating local resources. These were smallholder farmers, who came to be called peasants, or nongmin, in the early twentieth century. Narratives on the figure of the peasant have changed dramatically and often in the intervening years, expressing broader political debates, and suggesting the question, “what, then, is a Chinese peasant?” This paper attempts to answer that question in the context of (...) reform era China (post-1978). Using a critical discourse analysis of nongmin in contemporary political and popular discourse, the paper aims to further clarify politics on the figure of the peasant in China today, specifically in relation to state policy on rural and agricultural development. The central argument is that in addition to complex meanings and uses of nongmin, a Chinese peasant is also a social category used by political and economic elites to stand in for the ills of China’s agrifood system, and to promote a model of development that tries to separate the country’s current trajectory from its long agrarian history. In the context of state-led agroindustrialization aimed at developing a robust domestic agribusiness sector, both peasants as a social form and smallholding as an agricultural form are targets for capitalist transformation. Put another way, political discourses define peasants and small-scale farming as China’s agrifood “problems” for which further capitalist industrialization is posed as the only and inevitable “solution.” The paper concludes by arguing that changing China’s current trajectory away from the crises of industrial agriculture will require also changing the discursive frame: it is agroindustrialization that is the problem, for which nongmin and China’s tradition of smallholder farming are part of the solution. (shrink)

This book, written by one of the leading Japanese scholars in the philosophy of agricultural science, examines the relationship between human life, the natural environment, and agriculture.