by Jim Sumberg, John Thompson, Ken Giller and Jens Andersson
Agriculture, and the agronomic research that supports it, will be critical in making sustainable, equitable and secure development a reality. Surprisingly however, there seems to be increasing contestation around the priorities and methods used by agronomists, and the technologies that they develop and promote. Why is this, and is it a problem?
Taking a step back help put this into perspective. Every year thousands of students are advised that a compelling dissertation or thesis must engage with an important debate. A debate is contention through disciplined argument. It implies a testing of different views or positions, and conceptual, methodological or evidential tension.
And academic engagement suggests that the different arguments in the debate are picked apart and weighed, that evidence and counter-evidence is analysed critically, and that something new – in terms of theory, concepts, evidence or analysis – emerges from this process. In principle it is through the dynamics of debate and engagement that new ideas about complex questions or problems are generated and scientific knowledge is advanced.
From this perspective, lively debate and vigorous contestation are at the centre of agronomic knowledge production. It is argument and open and critical scrutiny of ideas and evidence which elevates agronomy to a science.
We are not therefore in the least concerned by debate, argument or contestation, as these are nothing more or less than the signs of a healthy discipline. After all, who could possibly be enthusiastic about a world of uncontested, consensual, neutral or plain vanilla agronomy?
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