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Director, Leopold Center, Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA 50011
leopold1{at}iastate.edu
Edited by N.G. ROLLING and M.A.E. WAGENMAKERS. Cambridge University Press, 40th West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211. 1998. Paperback, 318 pp., $29.95. ISBN 0-521-79481-1.
This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how communities can work together to make agriculture more sustainable. As the editors suggest, the book tries to answer two questions: "can we learn our way to a more sustainable agriculture? And if so, what does it take?"
What it takes, according to all of the contributors to this volume, is a much more comprehensive approach than has been taken heretofore. More often than not, we attempt to bring about change in agriculture simply by introducing new technologies. But according to the findings of these authors, it is primarily the "human actor" not the "bio-physical process" that must be addressed.
These authors take their point of departure from an epistemological perspective that is at variance with the realist-positive epistemology that is common among natural scientists. The latter, they argue, is showing itself increasingly incompatible with the efforts to establish a sustainable society. They suggest, as an alternative, an epistemological perspective that they call "constructionism," by which they mean- "reality no longer appears as a ‘given’ but as something actively ‘constructed’ by people." This is not to suggest that there is no "reality" out there, but that the only conceivable perception we can have of it is that which we obtain through our own experience.
This may appear like so many angels dancing on the head of academic pins. But the authors of this volume go to great length to point out why our previous efforts, based largely on the "realist-positivist" perspective, have failed to bring about a more sustainable agriculture. And they provide rich examples of how their alternative approach can and does bring about change. Two examples of failed attempts at implementing a more environmentally friendly agriculture in the Netherlands, and a successful attempt in Switzerland serve to make the point.
Anyone interested in the subject of how change with respect to land use can be implemented would find much in this book that is instructive. The book provides many practical ideas for how farmers and environmentalists can work together to achieve common objectives and help to develop policies that benefit both farmers and the environment.
We are also reminded that if we want to achieve practical goals with respect to the ecological health of our communities, then we need to look not only at the farms but at the ecosystem—the watershed, the polder, the ocean, etc. And we have to consider not just the farm household, but also the institutions in which the households are embedded.
This volume, I think, will be particularly useful to Extension. As the Extension Service struggles to reinvent itself in a post technology-transfer era, this volume could go a long way toward designing extension services to help communities find common ground in our efforts to redesign farming practices so that they are both profitable and ecologically sound. The emphasis of the book is on the human and social aspects involved in achieving that dual objective—an arena where Extension education can make a major contribution.
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