Nature's Place in the Technological Transformation of Agriculture: Some Reflections on the Recombinant BST Controversy in the USA

Abstract

In this paper I focus on the interactions between technological transformation of agrofood systems and the construction of discursive linkages between rurality and nature. I draw on Giddens's notion of time–space distanciation to show how the spatial configuration of modern agrofood systems creates possibilities but also imposes limits on discourses about agriculture and nature. Using some observations from the bovine somatotropin (BST) experience, I demonstrate that prospective technological transformations significantly influence the struggle for ‘control of the natural’ among the diversity of actors in the dairy-products commodity chain. Proponents and opponents of BST aimed to occupy the discursive high ground of ‘the natural’ in making their appeals to farmers, consumers, and policymakers. As it became clearer in the late 1980s that BST would not prove to be the revolutionary biotechnology product that proponents had originally claimed, both proponents and opponents significantly altered the substance of their discursive claims about what constitutes the natural. This suggests that vocabularies of nature are a flexible modality for contesting the course of social change in agrofood systems. Actors in the BST controversy not only contested the natural status of artifacts and practices such as the use of BST technology, they did so with respect to the social institutions of agricultural research and agricultural policy as well. Some legacies of the struggle for control of the natural in US dairying and in agrofood systems in general are discussed.