Environmental Studies Response 8

Here is my eighth reading response for my Environmental Studies class.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, author Michael Pollan describes how hybrid corn seed has doubled crop yields twice since 1930. This illustrates science’s incredible value, especially in regards to food production; however, part of Richard Levins’ Science and Progress: Seven Developmentalist Myths in Agriculture appears to favor “folk knowledge” over science.

The hybrid seed’s results are astounding. In 1920, the average corn yield was twenty bushels per acre. When hybrid seed was introduced in 1930, corn yields climbed and leveled out in the 1950’s around eighty bushels per acre. Presently, improved hybrid seed has increased corn yields to between 160 and 200 bushels per acre. Such an achievement displays science’s greatness and necessity. Furthermore, it indicates that in the future, science will accomplish more challenging feats, such as genetically altering seed so crops can grow in unbearable climates.

However, despite science’s clear extraordinary value within this sphere, Levins argues that scientific knowledge is not superior to folk knowledge. According to Levins, assuming “that science is the only way to knowledge” is “a chauvinist, class-based, and sexist contempt for the intellectual achievements of third world peoples, workers, and women of all countries” (Levins 437). Levins continues, arguing that modern science is not the only way to gather knowledge because “all peoples learn, experiment, and analyze” (Levins 437). However, that is not folk knowledge, but science without lab coats and gloves. When a farmer controls variables like fertilizer and water, and determines that his crops require more water, he has used science not folk knowledge. Whether on a personal level, like this example, or in a lab making hybrid seeds, science not folk knowledge has improved farming.

Levins needs to clarify his argument, specifically by defining folk knowledge differently from science. Otherwise, on this point it appears, Levins is backward, “scientific knowledge is modern” (Levins 437)

Levins, Richard. “Science and Progress: Seven Developmentalist Myths in Agriculture.”

Environment an Interdisciplinary Anthology. Ed. Glenn Adelson, James Engell,

Brent Ranalli, and K.P. Van Anglen. 1^st ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

434-439.