An examination of how farming expertise could be shared and extended,
over four centuries.
All kinds of knowledge, from traditional know-how to modern science, are
socially contingent and the product of an age-long and permanent social
struggle. This book unravels the creation and the exchange of agronomic
knowledge in rural Europe, from the early eighteenth century up until
the end of the twentieth. It explores the spreading of knowing through
the lens of "knowledge networks" where did agricultural knowledge come
from and how did one learn to run a farm? Who was involved in this
process of knowledge exchange? Which strategies and communicative
methods were employed and what kind of networks were active?
The answers to these questions mirror, as the book illustrates, the
inventiveness of the actors on the scene: the creativity of a French
naturalist in establishing links with local farmers to stop the
circulation of a devastating grain moth, the power of the agricultural
press to instill "proper values" into Hungarian farming practices or to
shape the identity of the Galician agrarian movement, and the agency of
post-war British farmers in selecting their own information, from
sources such as lectures to the Young Farmers' Club, visits by public
advisors and representatives of commercial firms, and radio programs.
From the start of the agricultural Enlightenment, increasingly farmers
have been besieged by a growing army of experts, telling them what to
do, when and how. In a sense farming has become one of the most
patronised professions. But farmers can resist and carve their own path.
The chapters here reveal the continuous tensions between science-based
agriculture and practice-based farming, between the expert image of an
ideal agriculture and the (less known) self-image of being a good
farmer. The dominant process, as this book shows, is that of an
instrumental top-down transmission of knowledge from "the lab to the
field". But between these two poles, complex and flourishing networks
developed, functioning as trading zones in which knowledge and
experience could be circulated, put to the test, forgotten, altered,
rejected - and sometimes imposed.
