Towards an alternative logic of technological change: Insights from Corn Belt agriculture

Empirical evidence drawn from a Corn Belt case study is used to connect the environmental and socioeconomic contradictions of agricultural production in the region. The paper rests on several key arguments: First, a preliminary case is made for a more explicit recognition of the theoretical and empirical links between the socioeconomic problems of agricultural regions stemming from chronically low levels of producer surplus retention and similar problems of social welfare associated with reduced levels of remunerated labor in the industrial sector. Second, there is a parallel need for connecting the negative social and environmental costs of capitalist agriculture. The case study uses the evolving production process on individual farms as a means of exploring the causal relationship between the movement towards capitalist social relations and environmental degradation resulting from intensive patterns of synthetic chemical use. And third, the role of agency among family farmers faced with a regional economic crisis emerges from the case study analysis. In the 1980s, a small minority of Iowa farmers would adopt, perfect and disseminate a low-chemical input system of production attuned to the logic of family farm social relations. The contribution of the state-sponsored research institutions was notably absent. The case example highlights the process of technological change as a socially-constructed phenomenon subject to alternative forms of rationality that emerge from different syntheses of ecological conditions and social relations.