Organic vs. conventional agriculture: knowledge, power and innovation
in the food chain
Geoforum, 31 (2):
159-173 (2000/5)Abstract
In this paper we examine the way that knowledge is distributed within
economic networks. Adopting a broad evolutionary approach we examine
the distribution of economic knowledge within two food chains: the
conventional food chain, which relies on intensive inputs into the
food production process, and thus tends to distribute knowledge towards
input suppliers, and the organic food supply chain, which distributes
knowledge back towards the farm as farmers must relocalise their
understandings of the production process. We present two stylised
accounts of each chain and show that for farmers to move from one
to the other they must forget many of the practices so characteristic
of the conventional chain in order to (re)learn how to farm in an
ecologically benign fashion. In the organic chain, we argue, farmers
can once again become “knowing agents”.
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