Alternative Knowledges, Organic Agriculture, and the Biotechnology Debate

Culturally constructed knowledge claims represent multiple ways of understanding the world. Although multiple knowledges prevail, the form of knowledge that has come to predominate within Western society particularly within agriculture stems from scientific determinism, or what some have called "reductionism." This dominant form of knowledge is based on the decomposition of systems into their component parts and the reliance upon experts to understand these systems. At the same time, those knowledges stemming from other ways of understanding tend to be trivialized, or defined as unhelpful or inconsequential. Biotechnology represents a form of knowledge that derives from such scientific reductionism. For many organic farmers, the application of biotechnology within agriculture represents the antithesis of what a sustainable farming system should be. These growers normally eschew conventional scientific-dependent methods of agriculture. They rely, instead, upon "alternative" knowledge sources for information on organic farming methods. Not unexpectedly, as a result of the peripheral position of organic farming within the larger structure of "productivist" agriculture (Monk 1998), research into organics has been minimal, while research and investment in biotechnology has grown at an increasing pace (Hindmarsh 1998).