ABSTRACT

This chapter examines three ideologies: conventional productivism, ecological progressivism, and radical humanism. These are the main perspectives on contemporary agriculture and agricultural research policy in the United States. Conventional productivism is probably the most familiar of the three ideologies. As in conventional productivism, solving agricultural problems with new technologies figures centrally in ecological progressivism. Progressive thinking came relatively late to the United States and it came piecemeal, institution-by-institution. Like ecological progressivism, radical humanism is linked to a critique of the industrial revolution. But where progressives tend to worry about the sustainability of large systems and hope to substitute long-term thinking for short-term, radical humanists are more concerned with the effects of industrialization on persons and cultures. The range of understandings of “agricultural sustainability” illustrates how agricultural controversy can be seen as a conflict of these ideologies.