{"id":7339,"date":"2010-11-19T13:47:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T17:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=7339"},"modified":"2010-11-19T13:47:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T17:47:16","slug":"preliminary-survey-literature-on-agricultural-research-to-1945","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2010\/11\/19\/preliminary-survey-literature-on-agricultural-research-to-1945\/","title":{"rendered":"Preliminary Survey: Literature on Agricultural Research to 1945"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk\/research\/areas\/agriculturalscience\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7354 alignright\" title=\"js-07-agriculture\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/etherwave.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/11\/js-07-agriculture.jpg?resize=150%2C223\" width=\"150\" height=\"223\" \/><\/a>The importance of agricultural research in the intellectual history of science should be self-evident.\u00a0 Justus Liebig (1803-1873) was a key figure in both the development of laboratory methodology and agricultural science.\u00a0 Gregor Mendel&#8217;s (1822-1884) famous experiments were in plant breeding.\u00a0 Louis Pasteur&#8217;s (1822-1895) most celebrated work was on the cattle disease, anthrax.\u00a0 William Bateson (1861-1926), who coined the term genetics, was the first director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London, 1910-1926.\u00a0 Statistician, geneticist, and eugenics proponent R. A. Fisher (1890-1962) was employed by the Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1919 to 1933 (and temporarily relocated there from 1939 to 1943).\u00a0 Interwar and postwar virologists and molecular biologists <a href=\"http:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/L\/bo3643856.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">did a great deal of work<\/a> on the economically destructive tobacco mosaic virus.<\/p>\n<p>In these examples, problems of agriculture form a motivating context for contributions to biology, statistics, and other fields.\u00a0 The history of agricultural research itself remains somewhat difficult to discern, even though it apparently constitutes a long, sizable tradition.\u00a0 We do have some enumeration of accomplishments in research and technique, written in retrospect by practitioners.\u00a0 For the case of the UK, the following resources are available:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><!--more-->A. Daniel Hall&#8217;s, <em>Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: Essays on Research, Practice, and Organization<\/em> (1939)<\/li>\n<li>E. John Russell&#8217;s <em>A History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain: 1620-1954 <\/em>(1966)<\/li>\n<li>G. W. Cooke&#8217;s <em>Agricultural Research, 1931-1981 <\/em>(UK Agricultural Research Council, 1981)<\/li>\n<li>Kenneth Blaxter and Noel Robertson&#8217;s <em>From Dearth to Plenty: The Modern Revolution in Food Production <\/em>(1995)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Agricultural historian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plymouth.ac.uk\/staff\/pbrassley#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paul Brassley<\/a> has written, &#8220;Agricultural Research in Britain, 1850-1914: failure, success, and development,&#8221; <em>Annals of Science <\/em><strong>52 <\/strong>(1995): 465-480.<\/p>\n<p>There is a significant literature on other countries&#8217; agricultural science.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sts.cornell.edu\/viewprofile.php?ProfileID=14\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Margaret Rossiter<\/a>, who is probably best known for her work on women in science, has had a long-term interest in the history of agricultural research in the United States; see especially her 1975 book <em>The Emergence of Agricultural Science: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 1840-1880<\/em>.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/history\/profiles\/Paolo-Palladino\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paolo Palladino<\/a> published <em>Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885-1985<\/em> in 1996.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ls.manchester.ac.uk\/people\/profile\/index.aspx?PersonID=774\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jonathan Harwood<\/a> published <em>Technology&#8217;s Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Practice and Science in Germany, 1860-1934 <\/em>in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>There is a very heavy emphasis in the literature on plant breeding, seemingly drawn toward the twin poles of the rise of genetics at the beginning of the 20th-century, and the rise of bio-engineering at its end.\u00a0 The literature emphasizes two tensions: that between a Mendelian approach to hybridization and more <em>ad hoc <\/em>approaches, and that between the pressure to implement new hybrids and the persistent use of traditional breeds and suppliers.\u00a0 In other words, there is (unsurprisingly) a central concern with the technocratic and techno-commercial possibilities to be found in genetics and the science of hybridization.<\/p>\n<p>On the UK case, Palladino wrote several articles in the early-to-mid-&#8217;90s:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Political Economy of Applied Research: Plant Breeding in Great Britain, 1910-1940,&#8221; <em>Minerva <\/em><strong>28 <\/strong>(1990): 446-468.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Between Craft and Science: Plant Breeding, Mendelian Genetics, and British Universities,&#8221; <em>Technology and Culture <\/em><strong>34 <\/strong>(1993): 300-323.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Wizards and Devotees: On the Mendelian Theory of Inheritance and the Professionalization of Agricultural Science in Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1930,&#8221; <em>History of Science <\/em><strong>32 <\/strong>(1994): 409-444.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Science, Technology, and the Economy: Plant Breeding in Great Britain, 1920-1970,&#8221; <em>The Economic History Review <\/em><strong>49 <\/strong>(1996): 116-136.\u00a0 [This one has some particularly nice statistics on the sources of seeds for various British crops over the time period of the study]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The American case was popular in the latter half of the &#8217;80s.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philau.edu\/schools\/liberalarts\/personal_pages\/Kimmelman.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Barbara Kimmelman&#8217;s<\/a> 1987 PhD dissertation was &#8220;A Progressive Era Discipline: Genetics at American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, 1900\u20131920&#8221; (Penn; also see her published articles).\u00a0 Sociologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drs.wisc.edu\/faculty\/kloppenburg\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jack Kloppenburg<\/a> published <em>First the Seed: The Political Economy of Biotechnology, 1492-2000 <\/em>in 1988.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mit.edu\/~dkfitz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Deborah Fitzgerald<\/a> published <em>The Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois, 1890-1940<\/em> in 1990 (as well as <em>Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture <\/em>in 2003).<\/p>\n<p>This literature has seen a renaissance in the past five years focusing beyond the UK and US.\u00a0 Along with Harwood&#8217;s 2005 book on German agricultural science in general, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrz.de\/%7Ethomas_wieland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thomas Wieland<\/a> has published <em>&#8220;Wir beherrschen den pflanzlichen Organismus besser. . . &#8220;: Wissenschaftliche Pflanzenz\u00fcchtung in Deutschland 1889-1945<\/em> (2004)<em>. <\/em>Historian of Nazi Germany Susanne Heim has published <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=fz7-p0JEGjAC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=susanne+heim&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=AKx9UZUVx0&amp;sig=KwE7EdM6X5c6g4yIQBdwRlFJ8P4&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=xI3mTN-3HorPhAf71LSwCQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=14&amp;ved=0CG0Q6AEwDQ#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Plant Breeding and Agrarian Research in Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes, 1933-1945: Calories, Caoutchouc, Careers<\/em><\/a> (2008).\u00a0 There is the collection edited by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.koyre.cnrs.fr\/spip.php?article90\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Christophe Bonneuil<\/a>, Gilles Denis, and Jean-Luc Mayaud, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.quae.com\/fr\/livre\/?GCOI=27380100629890\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sciences, Chercheurs et Agriculture: Pour une histoire de la recherche agronomique<\/a> <\/em>(2008, which, incidentally, includes a contribution by my fellow Imperial postdoc, Delphine Berdah).<\/p>\n<p>There is also a 2006 <a href=\"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/journal\/10739\/39\/2\/page\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">special issue<\/a> of the <em>Journal of the History of Biology<\/em> on &#8220;Biology and Agriculture&#8221; with a short introduction by Harwood and pieces on links between genetics and plant breeding by Bonneuil on France, Wieland on Germany, a case study by Kimmelman for the US, as well as a piece on the introduction of hybrids into Mexico by Karin Matchett.\u00a0 (To round it out, there&#8217;s also a piece by Lloyd Ackert on the non-genetics research of Sergeii Vinogradskii.)<\/p>\n<p>The genetics-technocracy angle comes very explicitly to the fore in <a href=\"http:\/\/caliber.ucpress.net\/toc\/hsns\/40\/4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the most recent issue<\/a> of <em>Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences<\/em>, dedicated to &#8220;Autarky\/Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism&#8221; which, along with Heim&#8217;s work, picks up on a long history of the contemplation and study of fascist modernity.\u00a0 Bernd Gausemeier (of the MPI) and Harwood tackle Germany in separate articles; Bonneuil and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Thomas deal with Vichy France (focusing on the work of Emile Schriebaux, Charles Cr\u00e9pin, Jean Bustarret, and F\u00e9licien Boeuf); Tiago Saraiva looks at Italy and Portugal, while Lino Camprub\u00ed handles Spain.<\/p>\n<p>All this new work suggests comparison with the UK case, which has a historiography anchored in the 1990s, and comes more out of an institutional-history tradition rather than the critical tradition surrounding a techno-idealism deriving from the science of hybridity, which is interesting given that some of the spade work was done by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pitt.edu\/~olbyr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robert Olby<\/a> whose own work on genetics dates back to the 1960s.\u00a0 He wrote &#8220;Scientists and Bureaucrats in the Establishment of the John Innes Horticultural Institute under William Bateson,&#8221; <em>Annals of Science <\/em><strong>46 <\/strong>(1989): 497-510; and the important political history, &#8220;Social Imperialism and State Support for Agricultural Research in Edwardian Britain,&#8221; <em>Annals of Science <\/em><strong>48 <\/strong>(1991): 509-526.\u00a0 The latter details the 1909 foundation of the British government&#8217;s Development Commission, which partially funded the establishment of a number of research stations in the 1910s and 1920s.<\/p>\n<p>The new research stations were centers for genetics research, premised in the notion that that work would aid in the development of a more grounded approach to agriculture.\u00a0 Olby&#8217;s work here even seems to have been prompted by work he was doing on Bateson&#8217;s role in the establishment of Mendelian genetics in Britain; see also his &#8220;William Bateson&#8217;s Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment,&#8221; <em>BJHS <\/em><strong>20 <\/strong>(1987): 399-420; and &#8220;The Dimensions of Scientific Controversy: The Biometric-Mendelian Debate,&#8221; <em>BJHS <\/em><strong>22 <\/strong>(1988): 299-320.\u00a0 However, even though Olby is coming from the intellectual history of genetics, he writes pretty straight-up political and institutional history.<\/p>\n<p>(On the topic of Bateson&#8217;s pre-1910 work at Cambridge, I can also recommend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clas.wayne.edu\/richmond\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marsha Richmond<\/a>, &#8220;The &#8216;Domestication&#8217; of Heredity: The Familial Organization of Geneticists at Cambridge University, 1895-1910,&#8221; <em>Journal of the History of Biology <\/em><strong>39 <\/strong>(2006): 565-605.\u00a0 Bateson&#8217;s experimental farm in Grantchester near Cambridge was unusual in the number of women who worked there, including Bateson&#8217;s collaborator Edith Rebecca Saunders.)<\/p>\n<p>Some further readings on institutions of British agricultural research:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abdn.ac.uk\/history\/staff\/details.php?id=d.f.smith\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David F. Smith<\/a>, &#8220;The Agricultural Research Association, the Development Fund, and the Origins of the Rowett Research Institute,&#8221; <em>Agricultural History Review <\/em><strong>46 <\/strong>(1998): 47-63.<\/li>\n<li>David F. Smith, &#8220;The Use of &#8216;Team Work&#8217; in the Practical Management of Research in the Interwar Period: John Boyd Orr at the Rowett Research Institute,&#8221; <em>Minerva <\/em><strong>37 <\/strong>(1999): 259-280.<\/li>\n<li>Timothy DeJager, &#8220;Pure Science and Practical Interests: The Origins of the Agricultural Research Council, 1930-1937,&#8221; <em>Minerva <\/em><strong>31 <\/strong>(1993): 129-150.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have not yet come across any work by historians on the important Rothamsted Experimental Station (est. 1843; first director after the death of the founders was A. Daniel Hall, 1902-1912, followed by E. John Russell, 1912-1943, so much of the aforementioned early UK history of agricultural science was basically written by Rothamsted people &#8212; good to keep that in mind!)\u00a0 Some more potted institutional histories also appear in some of Palladino&#8217;s aforementioned work.<\/p>\n<p>Smith comes to the work on Orr and Rowett Research Institute from the perspective of the history of nutrition, which seems to fall within the history of medicine.\u00a0 It looks to me as though there is a pretty substantial divide between the historians of medicine, who focus on nutrition, and historians of biology, who focus on breeding, even though the nutritionists appear to have been trained in biology and chemistry as much as medicine, and even though there does not seem to have been a huge divide between nutrition and genetics in agricultural research work itself, which dealt constantly with cross-cutting problems of agricultural yield and food quality.\u00a0 I have not included the literature on the history of public nutrition here, and, at first glance, it does not seem to be tightly integrated into the agriculture historiography.<\/p>\n<p>Policy history is a third area that, despite Olby&#8217;s political histories, seems detached from the science historiography except insofar as policy is taken to comprise a successful or unsuccessful <em>dirigisme <\/em>of scientific breeding &#8212; though I still have to hunt down copies of Palladino&#8217;s and Harwood&#8217;s books on the non-UK cases.\u00a0 In the UK, we do know that university agriculture departments (of which there were a good number, and on which I have found very little) and research institutes (often semi-attached to universities) were also centers of agricultural advice.\u00a0 On early history, see Colin J. Holmes, &#8220;Science and the Farmer: The Development of the Agricultural Advisory Service in England and Wales, 1900-1939,&#8221; <em>Agricultural History Review <\/em><strong>36 <\/strong>(1988): 77-86.\u00a0 The National Agricultural Advisory Service was created in 1946, and it has its own institutional history, Neil F. McCann, <em>The Story of the National Agricultural Advisory Service, A Mainspring of Agricultural Revival, 1946-1971<\/em> (1989).\u00a0 (Today is it an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adas.co.uk\/Home\/Whoweare\/tabid\/207\/Default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">independent consultancy<\/a>.)\u00a0 There is also a nice broad overview, <em>The Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food<\/em> (1962) by John Winnfrith, the ministry&#8217;s permanent secretary.\u00a0 Obviously official histories are to be taken with due caution, but, then, so are critical histories.<\/p>\n<p>It is not clear to me that the relationship between research and advice, state regulation, market action, and the choices of individual farmers is well worked out, nor is it clear to me that these histories have been given their proper independence from each other given interest in locating the inevitable tensions between them.\u00a0 A follow-up post will attempt to consolidate some gains in the UK case.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Addendum, 23 November 2010<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One ought not to forget the work of one&#8217;s supervisor (who has been of great help with this survey), see especially: Abigail Woods, &#8220;The Farm as Clinic: Veterinary Expertise and the Transformation of Dairy Farming, 1930-1950,&#8221; <em>Studies in History and Philosophy <\/em><em>of Biological and Biomedical Sciences <\/em><strong>38 <\/strong>(2007): 462-487; that contains a reference to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uclan.ac.uk\/ahss\/education_social_sciences\/history\/kvernon.php\">Keith Vernon<\/a>, &#8220;Science for the Farmer? Agricultural Research in England, 1909-36,&#8221; <em>Twentieth Century British History <\/em><strong>8 <\/strong>(1997): 310-333.\u00a0 Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/ipbio.org\/berris.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Berris Charnley<\/a> is just now finishing up a PhD on agricultural science and Mendelian genetics at Leeds.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Addendum, 8 January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>See also bibliographies on plant breeding on <a href=\"http:\/\/heredity.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de\/heredity\/Heredity\/workshops\/past-related\/Plant-Breeding.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this page<\/a> at the MPIWG.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of agricultural research in the intellectual history of science should be self-evident.\u00a0 Justus Liebig (1803-1873) was a key figure in both the development of laboratory methodology and agricultural science.\u00a0 Gregor Mendel&#8217;s (1822-1884) famous experiments were in plant breeding.\u00a0 Louis Pasteur&#8217;s (1822-1895) most celebrated work was on the cattle disease, anthrax.\u00a0 William Bateson (1861-1926),<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; Preliminary Survey: Literature on Agricultural Research to 1945<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2010\/11\/19\/preliminary-survey-literature-on-agricultural-research-to-1945\/\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[41,88,156,172,173,249,263,304,321,359,377,535,545,756,798,852,859,888,892,911,972,1010,1025,1108,1147,1154,1217,1279,1393,1435,1440,1442,1512],"class_list":["post-7339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technocracy-in-the-uk","tag-abigail-woods","tag-alfred-daniel-hall","tag-barbara-kimmelman","tag-bernd-gausemeier","tag-berris-charnley","tag-christophe-bonneuil","tag-colin-j-holmes","tag-david-f-smith","tag-deborah-fitzgerald","tag-edith-rebecca-saunders","tag-edward-john-russell","tag-gilles-denis","tag-gregor-mendel","tag-jean-luc-mayaud","tag-john-boyd-orr","tag-john-winnifrith","tag-jonathan-harwood","tag-justus-liebig","tag-karin-matchett","tag-keith-vernon","tag-louis-pasteur","tag-margaret-rossiter","tag-marsha-richmond","tag-neil-f-mccann","tag-paolo-palladino","tag-paul-brassley","tag-r-a-fisher","tag-robert-olby","tag-susanne-heim","tag-thomas-wieland","tag-tiago-saraiva","tag-timothy-dejager","tag-william-bateson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}