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The problem with the farmer’s voice

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Abstract

In this essay we present three biases that make it difficult to represent farmer voices in a meaningful way. These biases are information bias, individual bias, and short-term bias. We illustrate these biases through two case studies. One is the case of Golden Rice in the Philippines and the other is the case of Bt cotton in India.

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Notes

  1. There are odd exceptions, such as projects that literally center on farmers’ voices, such as the synchronous voice message forum trialed in rural Gujarat (Patel et al. 2010).

  2. As of 2013, IRRI responded to claims that Golden Rice would save lives and eyesight, pointing out that “it has not yet been determined whether daily consumption of Golden Rice does improve the vitamin A status of people who are vitamin A deficient and could therefore reduce related conditions such as night blindness,” and that it would not be distributed unless this were determined to be the case (IRRI 2013). Tang et al. (2012) reported that Golden Rice raised Vitamin A levels in a sample of well-nourished Chinese children, but no trials have been conducted on the actual target population of poorly-nourished children.

  3. We are confident that an actual ethnographic study of Nueva Ecija farmers would reveal that very few practices or opinions were attributable to either the Department of Agriculture in Quezon City or PhilRice, and that farmers acted on a near-daily basis on information gleaned from local sources.

  4. Since 2013, this research has been funded by the grant "GM Crops and Indigenous management," awarded to Stone by the John Templeton Foundation. Stone's research on Indian agriculture from 2000 to 2012 was funded by National Science Foundation (Grants 0078396 and 0314404), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and by Washington University. Methodologies are described in detail in the cited articles.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Glenn Davis Stone & Andrew Flachs

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  1. Glenn Davis Stone
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  2. Andrew Flachs
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Correspondence to Glenn Davis Stone.

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Stone, G.D., Flachs, A. The problem with the farmer’s voice. Agric Hum Values 31, 649–653 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9535-1

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