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Political Agronomy

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Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics

Synonyms

Agricultural research; Conservation agriculture; Contested agronomy; Political ecology; System of rice intensification

Introduction

Agronomy, in the Anglophone tradition, is usually understood as the application to crop production of knowledge and technology developed from the plant and soil sciences. Through both formal and informal research and practice, new agronomic knowledge and technology are created that can be used to address “technical” problems within existing production systems, develop new systems, and/or to further specific social, political, economic, technical, and/or commercial objectives. Any aspect of this process may be contested, from the identification of a problem or the configuration and performance of a new technology or system through to the vision (implicit or explicit) of a desirable future world that underpins it. With politics understood broadly as social relations involving authority or power, the term political agronomyrefers to the study of...

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References

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Correspondence to James Sumberg .

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Sumberg, J., Thompson, J., Woodhouse, P. (2014). Political Agronomy. In: Thompson, P.B., Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_143

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_143

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