The problem with the farmer’s voice

Stone, Geoffrey R.; Flachs, Andrew

doi:10.1007/s10460-014-9535-1

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In this section, I examine how both activists and promoters utilized similar appeals to peasants as witnesses and arbiters of the technology. Both sides used peasant testimonials and the 'farmer's voice' as evidence for their side, which is a common feature of GMO debates (Stone & Flachs, 2014). Both sides wanted to claim the authority, legitimacy, and authenticity that comes from truly representing the peasants; indeed, their causes depend on these claims of representation (Borras et al, 2008).…”

Section: Both Sides Claim Peasants As Witnesses and Arbitersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, farmers' adoption decisions are strongly shaped by economic pressures to increase incomes to repay debts, combined with increasing on-farm labour shortages (Luna, 2020). Second, farmers may choose technologies that ultimately harm them, as when they end up overly in debt, adopt technologies because of social fads or use technologies that cause long-term health or ecological harm (Flachs, 2019;Luna, 2018Luna, , 2020Stone & Flachs, 2014). Both scientists and large numbers of farmers in Burkina Faso eagerly embraced Bt cotton, but they did so in highly constrained conditions, where input-intensive mono-cropped cotton production is one of few choices available to farmers and the state to produce income and repay debts.…”

Section: Appeals To Farmer Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

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Peasant essentialism in GMO debates: Bt cotton in Burkina Faso

Luna

2020

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Amidst polarized global debates about genetically modified (GM) crops, much attention has focused on Burkina Faso, where farmers grew Bt cotton from 2008 to 2015 in the first widespread commercial adoption of GM crops by smallholder African farmers. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and 125 interviews to analyse the debate accompanying this adoption, contending that both sides employed stock agrarian imaginaries that essentialized rural people. These competing imaginaries—romantic versus modern—reproduced polarized global narratives about GM crops and peasants, while misrepresenting or overlooking the inequalities and constraints shaping rural communities and the specifics of Bt cotton production. Both sides sought to claim the legitimacy and authenticity that comes from representing ‘the peasants’, yet ironically flattened the complexity of rural experiences. This paper demonstrates how each side's adherence to agrarian imaginaries served to produce erroneous knowledge claims. This adherence resulted in part from local resource constraints and dependence on external actors, which produced pressure to conform to polarized global GMO scripts. The paper concludes that GMO debate participants and observers must eschew essentializing imaginaries if they seek to produce more accurate knowledge about farmers' varied experiences with GM crops.

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Section: Both Sides Claim Peasants As Witnesses and Arbitersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Appeals To Farmer Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Peasant essentialism in GMO debates: Bt cotton in Burkina Faso

Luna

2020

Journal of Agrarian Change

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“…The goal of agricultural experimentation is to isolate the subsystems of farming to develop products to sell to farmers, not to understand agriculture as a whole. Given the trouble with real‐farm experimental learning, it should not surprise us that products bought by farmers may or may not benefit them in the long run (Stone and Flachs ). As argued below, adoption of the marketable products emanating from formal research is often aided by social and especially didactic learning.…”

Section: Environmental Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Didacts in general claim to benefit the farmer, but commercial didacts characteristically make this case with reference to the free market and the presumption that farmers adopt only products that benefit them (as we saw in the Monsanto correspondence above). However, farmers often cannot foresee long‐term or even medium‐term impacts of technologies; adoption decisions are biased toward the short term (Stone and Flachs ), and agricultural faddism has a long history as noted. Commercial products also have a history of displacing environmental learning with didactic learning.…”

Section: Didactic Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a General Theory of Agricultural Knowledge Production: Environmental, Social, and Didactic Learning

Stone¹

2016

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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Social scientists and input producers alike have seen farmer decision making as driven by environmental learning based on experimentation and empirical observation. A more robust body of theory influenced by behavioral ecology sees a major role for social learning based on emulation of models selected on social criteria, although the relationship between these learning modes is not well understood. But a larger problem is that these perspectives ignore what is here termed didactic learning, whereby various parties bring instruction to the farm. Although not previously theorized, didactic learning is often crucial in agricultural learning and also distinct because it is driven by off-farm interests.

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“…Many individuals and interests are speaking on behalf of farmers, but few are listening (Schnurr & Mujabi-Mujuzi, 2014;Stone & Flachs, 2014). No one is really sure whether these technologies make sense given the ecological, economic and social conditions farmers face across the continent.…”

Section: Questions For Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

GRAB - GMO 2.0: Genetically modified crops and the push for Africa’s green revolution

Schnurr¹

2015

CanFoodStudies

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Genetically modified (GM) crops are plants in which the DNA has been engineered using laboratory techniques to express a beneficial trait. Their reception across the globe has been mixed: they form a dominant part of North American agriculture, they have been met with widespread disapproval in Europe, and they are of increasing importance in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil. Approximately 9 percent of agricultural land worldwide was planted under GM crops in 2014. This figure expanded at a rate of 6 million hectares over the previous year, driven largely by growth in the Global South. Developing countries now account for more than 50 percent of the total acreage planted worldwide, and more than 90 percent of the 18 million farmers cultivating them (James, 2014).This first wave of GM crops was focused around herbicide and pest-resistance, designed to make industrial farming more productive and more profitable. Over the past decade, a second wave of GM crops has emerged, one with a substantive focus on improving yields and livelihoods and a geographical focus on developing countries. Supporters suggest that these second-generation GM crops-which I refer to here as GMO 2.0-present a new vision for the contribution agricultural biotechnology can make to the global food system. Africa in particular has emerged as the "final frontier" in the global debate over GM agriculture, and a key component of the broader push towards Africa's Green Revolution (Karembu, Nguthi, & Abdel-Hamid, 2009). The debate over the potential for GM crops to transform African agriculture is an important test for proponents who claim that agricultural biotechnology can play a crucial role in alleviating poverty and hunger. This paper aims to

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The problem with the farmer’s voice

Cited by 17 publications

References 18 publications

Peasant essentialism in GMO debates: Bt cotton in Burkina Faso

Peasant essentialism in GMO debates: Bt cotton in Burkina Faso

Towards a General Theory of Agricultural Knowledge Production: Environmental, Social, and Didactic Learning

GRAB - GMO 2.0: Genetically modified crops and the push for Africa’s green revolution

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