On farms and in laboratories: maize seed technologies and the unravelling of relational agroecological knowledge in South Africa

Marshak, Maya

On farms and in laboratories: maize seed technologies and the unravelling of relational agroecological knowledge in South Africa

Doctoral Thesis

2021

Abstract

When Europeans settled in South Africa in the 17th century, maize was already being grown as part of diverse and traditional cropping systems. Over centuries maize has become embedded in a web of social, ecological, economic and political relations. Since the 1900s the development of maize seed has increasingly shifted location as scientific maize breeding has come to dominate its production. In this time maize seed has changed form, from open pollinated varieties (OPVs) to hybrid seed, and most recently to genetically modified (GM) seed. While the progression of seed developments alongside their co-technologies such as pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides has greatly boosted yields, the development of maize has become increasingly generic and disconnected from the specificities of local agroecosystems. Like all technologies, maize seed technologies are not neutral but are rather deeply entangled in the history and politics of knowledge production. Commercial technologies such as hybrid and GM seeds are products of a particular lineage of thought rooted in the post-enlightenment age of modernist, dualist science. This has resulted in a conceptual dualism in which humans are seen as separate from nature. Studies on the impacts of new seed technologies have tended to replicate this dualism, focusing either on social or ecological aspects. Few investigate the effects on relationships between humans and agro-ecosystems. This thesis aims to address this knowledge gap by exploring the effects of the technification of maize seed on knowledge and practices within two sites of agricultural knowledge generation and practice in South Africa: smallholder maize agriculture and maize research and development. These offer two unique sites of knowledge creation and practice, and historically have had a turbulent relationship, rooted in colonialism and apartheid histories. Through exploring human-agroecosystem interactions, the research hopes to contribute to a broadened understanding about the impacts of maize seed technification and implications for agricultural knowledge generation and sustainability. Drawing conceptually and methodologically on posthumanist theory, this thesis investigates the changing nature of social-ecological relationships of and between smallholder farmers and scientists and the agro-ecological systems in which they work. Building on the concept of agricultural deskilling, it argues that modern seed technologies have contributed to ecological deskilling both on smallholder farms and within research and development, as seed technologies become increasingly disconnected from the environments in which they are used. 2 Increasingly, however, there is renewed interest by both farmers and scientists in ecological-reskilling as new ‘silver bullet' seed technologies reveal many setbacks. The thesis concludes that in order to rebuild displaced ecological knowledge an ontological shift is needed to move beyond dualist science-based approaches to farming and research, towards those that learn from relational ways of knowing. Approaches should be embraced that acknowledge the relational knowledge of smallholder farmers that has been displaced and devalued for centuries and that builds this relationality into research. This c could contribute to restoring cognitive justice and fostering more resilient agricultural futures.

Keywords

Environmental and Geographical Science

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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