Ever since Hightower: The politics of agricultural research activism in the molecular age

In 1973, Jim Hightower and his associates at the Agribusiness Accountability Project dropped a bombshell – HardTomatoes,HardTimes–onthe land-grantcollegeandagricultural scienceestablishments.Fromtheearly1970s until roughly 1990, Hightower-style criticism of and activism toward the public agricultural research system focusedonasetof closely interrelated themes: the tendencies for thepublicly supported researchenterprise tobean unwarranted taxpayersubsidyofagribusiness, foragricultural researchandextensiontofavor large farmersandbe disadvantageous for family farmers, for public research to stress mechanization while ignoring the concerns and interests of farmworkers, and for the research and extension establishment to ignore rural poverty andother rural socialproblems.By1990,however, therehadbeenaquite fundamental restructuringof theagricultural technology opposition movement – one that is not often well recognized. Two overarching changes had occurred. First, agricultural-technologyactivismhadshifted fromcontesting land-grant/public researchpriorities andpractices to contesting private agribusiness technological priorities and practices. Second, the relatively integrated, overarching Hightower-type opposition had undergone bifurcation into two quite distinct social movements: the agricultural sustainability/local food systemsmovement on one hand, and the anti-GM food/crop and anti-foodsystem-globalization movement on the other. In this paper I explore the causes and consequences of these restructurings of the agricultural research and technology opposition movement. Chief among the major factors involvedwas the fact that ‘‘Hightowerism’’ involvedan ineffectual representational politics.Hightowerist claims– especially the claimthat land-grant researchwasdetrimental to family farmers–generated little supportamong the groups it claimed to represent (particularly ‘‘small’’ or ‘‘family’’ farmers). The two successor movements, by contrast, have relatively clear and dependable constituents. Further, the progressive molecularization of agricultural research, which proved to be both an antecedent and consequence of corporate involvement in agricultural research in the US, has decisively changed the issues that are contested by technology activists. Since the age of Hightower, the agricultural technology activist movement has shifted its 1970s and early 1980s emphasis from contesting public sector/land-grant research priorities to contesting private sector activities, particularly genetic engineering, GM crops, and globalization of agricultural technologies and regulatory practices. Even the sustainability/localism wing of the new agricultural technology movement configuration has progressively backed away fromcontestingpublic research priorities. The efforts of the sustainable agricultural and localismmovement have increasingly focusedonquasi-private efforts suchascommunity supportedagriculture, green/‘‘value-added’’ labelingandmarketing strategies, andcommunity foodsecurity.Some implicationsof this increasinglybifurcated, agricultural technology, activistmovement configuration inwhich there is decreased interest in land-grant/public research priorities are discussed.