Agronomy for Development

The Politics of Knowledge in Agricultural Research

James Sumberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138240278
• eBook ISBN: 9781315284033
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

Over the last decade there has been renewed interest in food security and the state of the global food system. Population growth, climate change and food price spikes have combined to focus new attention on the technologies and institutions that underpin the production and consumption of food that is varied, nutritious and safe.

Knowledge politics within development-oriented agronomy set the stage for some models of agricultural development to be favoured over others, with very real implications for the food security and wellbeing of many millions of people. Agronomy for Development demonstrates how the analysis of knowledge politics can shed valuable new light on current debates about agricultural development and food security. Using bio-physical and social sciences perspectives to address the political economy of the production and use of knowledge in development, this edited collection reflects on the changing politics of knowledge within the field of agronomy and the ways in which these politics feed and reflect the interests of a broad set of actors.

This book is aimed at professionals working in agricultural research as well as students and practitioners of agricultural, rural and international development.

1
Knowledge Politics in Development-Oriented Agronomy

Jens A. Andersson and James Sumberg

Introduction

Over the last two decades there has been renewed concern about food security and the state of the global food system. After a long period in which agricultural research and development issues were largely neglected by national governments and the international community (Adenle et al. 2013), population growth, climate change, food price spikes, food safety scares and food-related disease have brought debates about food production and consumption back into the public arena (Ingram et al. 2010; HLPE 2011; UK Foresight 2011). For example, the World Bank largely ignored the central role of agriculture in rural development throughout much of the late 1980s and 1990s: its World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (World Bank 2007) was the first time in 25 years the Bank’s flagship publication was devoted to agriculture. With this renewed concern has come a rekindled appreciation of the agricultural sciences, which are increasingly understood to have a major role to play in addressing these challenges. Bringing together the biological, technical and human factors in agricultural production, agronomy is at the very centre of efforts to sustainably enhance agricultural productivity.

Yet we suggest that the discipline of agronomy is also in a state of transition, and at the heart of this transition are questions such as ‘What agronomy?’, ‘Whose agronomy?’ and ‘Whose agronomy counts?’. While such questions are being asked about agronomy in general, our focus is specifically on agronomy as a component of rural development in the global South. We call this ‘development-oriented agronomy’, which is itself a broad church. It includes a myriad of sub-specialties relating to crop and pasture production, including but not limited to crop and soil management, crop improvement, irrigation, crop-livestock integration, farm and farming systems analysis. It is undertaken in and funded by a range of public and private sector organisations, in the South and in the North. A defining characteristic of development-oriented agronomy is that it is motivated by a desire to contribute to one or more development challenges, like food and nutrition security, human welfare and wellbeing, or environmental sustainability.

Development-oriented agronomy is no stranger to debate and contestation. For example, there has been a protracted debate about the role of agronomic technology and management practices in the Green Revolution in Asia, and their poverty, equity and environmental effects – although not much of this debate has appeared in mainstream agronomy journals (Griffin 1974; Conway 1999; Evenson and Gollin 2003; Orr 2012; Patel 2013). Recent years have also seen claims and counter claims, as well as contradictory conclusions, endorsements, declarations and recommendations about, for example, the performance and potential value of genetically modified (GM) crops, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), Conservation Agriculture (CA), organic farming’s ability to feed the world, the Savory holistic grazing method, New Rice for Africa (NERICA), Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), Sustainable Intensification and so on. Such contestations appear to be an increasingly common feature of agronomy as a scientific discipline, and for this reason they should not be dismissed as aberrations, sideshows or signs of a failing discipline. On the contrary, as argued in Contested Agronomy: Agricultural Research in a Changing World (Sumberg and Thompson 2012), they are worthy of serious analysis for what they can tell us about the politics that underpin and orient the production and promotion of development-oriented agronomic knowledge.

In the next sections of this chapter we explore the notion of development-oriented agronomy in more depth. We then briefly summarise the original contested agronomy argument. Following this, the chapter focuses on the notion of knowledge politics, which sits at the core of contested agronomy. The last section links these arguments to subsequent chapters in this volume.

Development-oriented agronomy

Development-oriented agronomy as we know it today is firmly rooted in the European colonial era (Ross 2014). The ecosystems, crops, soils and farming practices that colonial officers encountered in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and the drive to use or to modify these to fuel European economic expansion – framed the development of the new sub-speciality of ‘tropical agronomy’. But aside from a focus on tropical areas and the close association with the authority of the colonial project, as a field of knowledge creation, there was, initially, little inherent coherence to tropical agronomy.

The shift from tropical agronomy to development-oriented agronomy took place over a number of years, having started already in the colonial era, for example in the growing pre-occupation with the modernisation of indigenous agricultural practices. It reflected the change from colonial to independent administrations; the development of national agricultural research organisations and capabilities; a greater emphasis on food crops and rural poverty alleviation; and more generally, the emergence of the ‘developmental state’ (Leftwich 1995). In parallel, as colonial configurations transitioned to the new institutions and international relations of foreign aid, technical and development assistance, development-oriented agronomy took on a stronger international dimension with, for example, the establishment of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and regional research organisations, as well as networks of students, relations and partnerships linking agricultural universities, research institutions and projects in the South and the North.

If tropical agronomy lacked coherence as a field of knowledge creation, a similar charge can also be levelled at development-oriented agronomy. A variety of understandings of and approaches to development-oriented agronomy are evident, as exemplified by different definitions and research traditions. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary (2012) defines agronomy as ‘the practice or (now chiefly) the science of crop production and soil management’. The American Society of Agronomy’s Agronomy Journal frames agronomy essentially as technical science that has little overt concern with the social, economic or political relations within which agriculture and agronomic research are undertaken. Specifically, Agronomy Journal publishes:

articles relating […] soil-plant relationships; crop science; soil science; biometry; crop, soil, pasture, and range management; crop, forage, and pasture production and utilization; turfgrass; agroclimatology; agronomic modeling; statistics; production agriculture; and computer software.¹

A somewhat broader perspective is apparent in the definition of agronomie given in Larousse agricole:

Ensemble des sciences nécessaires à la compréhension de l’agriculture et des techniques utiles à sa pratique. Au sens strict, l’agronomie est l’étude scientifique des relations entre les plantes cultivées, le milieu (sol, climat) et les techniques agricoles. Dans un sens plus large, elle comprend aussi l’ensemble des sciences et des techniques relatives à l’élevage, à la sylviculture, au génie rural. Enfin, l’économie, la sociologie, la comptabilité et la gestion de l’exploitation agricole sont aujourd’hui considérées comme des sciences nécessaires à la compréhension des techniques.

[All the sciences necessary to understand agriculture and the techniques used to practice it. Strictly speaking, agronomy is the scientific study of the relationships between cultivated plants, the environment (soil, climate) and agricultural techniques. In a much broader sense, it also includes all sciences and technologies related to livestock (breeding), forestry and rural engineering. Finally, economics, sociology, accounting and management of the farm are nowadays also considered necessary for understanding technology.]

(Mazoyer et al. 2002)

One might conclude that the Francophone tradition of agronomy and agronomic training is inherently more holistic, situated and systems-oriented. However, it would probably be a mistake to draw too sharp a distinction between Anglophone and Francophone traditions in development-oriented agronomy. For instance, both made important contributions to the farming systems research movement of the 1980s and 1990s (Fresco 1984; Jouve 1986; Brossier 1987; Collinson 2000), which can be seen as an attempt to broaden and situate development-oriented agronomy (although at least on the Anglophone side, largely led by economists). A desire to broaden and situate agronomy can also be discerned in the sustainable agriculture and agroecology movements (Wezel et al. 2009), and in the interest within the CGIAR and elsewhere in so-called ‘agricultural research for development’ (AR4D) (Virchow and von Braun 2001; von Kaufmann 2007; cf. Coe et al. 2014).

There is a line of argument, which suggests that every farmer could be considered to be an agronomist (Allan 1965; Richards 1985), and to some degree an experimental agronomist (Richards 1986; Sumberg and Okali 1997). However, as important as they may be, our central interest is not ‘people’s agronomy’, ‘folk agronomy’ or farmers’ experiments. Rather, our focus is on formal research within the discipline of agronomy, including those activities that generate new agronomic knowledge, as well as the use of that knowledge to promote new practices.

The contested agronomy argument

As set out by Sumberg, Thompson and Woodhouse (2012, 2013) the contested agronomy argument has four main elements:

1. Over the last four decades the context within which agronomic research takes place has been transformed fundamentally, with the most important changes being the rise of (a) the neoliberal project; (b) the environmental agenda; and (c) the participation agenda.
2. As a result, the long-standing unity of purpose between the state on the one hand, and the agronomic research establishment on the other, has been undermined. Agronomy has ceased to be the handmaiden of the state, with important implications for how development-oriented agronomy in particular is conceived, funded, managed, implemented, evaluated and portrayed.
3. With less unity of purpose, and in the more crowded, competitive, short-term and impact-oriented funding context, development-oriented agronomy has become an altogether more contested and contentious space: the politics around agronomic knowledge is now less controlled and much more public.
4. This new knowledge politics around development-oriented agronomy is having important impacts on the discipline itself, and on its ability to address the challenge of sustainably enhancing agricultural productivity.

The environmental and participation agendas certainly helped to restructure the language and re-orient the gaze of development-oriented agronomy. For example, today when words like ‘agriculture’, ‘farming systems’ and ‘intensification’ appear without being preceded by ‘sustainable’, it is as if a sacred norm has been publicly and dangerously flouted. Also, the propositions that farmers are knowledgeable, that agronomic research should be client- or demand-driven, and that potential users of technology should have a role in technology development, are now commonly accepted among agronomists. The extent to which the environmental and participation agenda have really changed the framings, priorities, methods or outputs of development-oriented agronomy is open to question, particularly in the face of the panic around ‘feeding 9 billion people by 2050’ and the resulting narrow focus on the use of technology to increase production and close yield gaps. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that new spaces have been opened up for the public contestation of agronomy’s goals, priorities, methods, findings and recommendations.

At the same time, the effects of the neoliberal project on development-oriented agronomy have been and continue to be very real. The goal of shrinking the state and strengthening accountability led to the embedding of New Public Management (NPM) principles in international and national agricultural research institutions (Dunleavy and Hood 1994; Manning 2001). These principles include performance auditing and measurement, privatisation, competition, strategic planning and management, and public–private partnership (Gruening 2001). For publicly funded agricultural research this has meant a fundamental change in the basis on which research programmes are conceived, funds allocated and investments evaluated.

The influence of NPM can be seen in the emphasis that funders of agricultural research now place on developing results frameworks, elaborating targets, identifying quick wins, meeting delivery schedules, theorising impact pathways, and demonstrating ‘value for money’, and ultimately, impact at scale. The CGIAR’s Strategy and Results Framework 2016–2025 with its vision, mission, three strategic goals or system-level outcomes (SLOs), ten Intermediate Development Outcomes (IDOs) and 32 sub-IDOs is a case in point,² but it is certainly not unique. While these instruments have become an accepted part of the agricultural research landscape, we know of no research that investigates their effects on research processes or outputs. Sumberg et al. (2013) hypothesised that their imposition would likely favour downstream over upstream and short-term over long-term research, which would be at odds with the rhetorical focus on sustainability.

The need to demonstrate impact at scale creates strong incentives for individuals and organisations at all levels – from field-based research agronomists, through programmes and partnerships, to bi- and multi-lateral research funders – to draw attention to, and defend their particular contributions, their successes. It is ironic that in an era of ‘evidence-based policy making’ and ‘rigorous impact evaluation’, the success story has become a format of choice in the struggle to convince funders, politicians and the public of the benefits of development-oriented agricultural research (e.g. Wiggins 2009; Spielman and Pandya-Lorch 2009; cf. Sumberg, Irving, et al. 2012).

It is in this context that a focus on knowledge politics within development-oriented agronomy becomes particularly important.

Knowledge politics in development-oriented agronomy

In the social sciences, the idea that knowledge and evidence are inseparable from power and politics is now widely accepted. Robert Chambers’ simple question ‘Whose knowledge?’ (Chambers 1983) reminds us of the existence of different knowledges, and the inherent limitations of thinking in terms of a single objective truth or reality. The political angle comes into play as individuals and groups selectively generate and/or use knowledge to establish, maintain or enhance their vested interests. The common and logical presumption in much of the literature on knowledge politics is that powerful actors are best placed to do this successfully.

Contested Agronomy: Agricultural Research in a Changing World (Sumberg and Thompson 2012), primarily sought to draw attention to the rise of more explicit knowledge politics within and around the field of agronomy. It sought to open up the analysis of agronomic knowledge production, appropriation and application in terms of different interests, networks, epistemic communities and asymmetric power relations (Andersson and Giller 2012; Brooks and Johnson-Beebout 2012; Sumberg, Thompson and Woodhouse 2012). In so doing it brought to the fore the role of the agronomist, but perhaps more importantly, the role of agronomic research institutes, as political actors. Focusing on specific contestations and alliances among agronomists, and between agronomists, policy makers, practitioners and other development actors, provides an obvious entry-point for analysis of the politics of development-oriented agronomic research. This focus highlights important questions such as: ‘Who are the powerful actors?’, ‘What are their vested interests?’ and ‘How is knowledge created and mobi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of abbreviations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Knowledge politics in development-oriented agronomy
• 2 On the movement of agricultural technologies: packaging, unpacking and situated reconfiguration
• 3 South–South cooperation and agribusiness contestations in irrigated rice: China and Brazil in Ghana
• 4 GM crops ‘for Africa’: contestation and knowledge politics in the Kenyan biosafety debate
• 5 Systems research in the CGIAR as an arena of struggle: competing discourses on the embedding of research in development
• 6 One step forward, two steps back in farmer knowledge exchange: ‘scaling up’ as Fordist replication in drag
• 7 When the solution became a problem: strategies in the reform of agricultural extension in Uganda
• 8 Sweet ‘success’: contesting biofortification strategies to address malnutrition in Tanzania
• 9 Crops in context: negotiating traditional and formal seed institutions
• 10 Laws of the field: rights and justice in development-oriented agronomy
• 11 A golden age for agronomy?
• References
• Index