ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that privatization hurts the conduct of agricultural and food science because open access is necessary for high-quality scientific work. Privatization of scientific agricultural knowledge has occurred through multiple mechanisms. Aya Kimura analyzed “food education experts”, mainly women, who had obtained their certification from private enterprise institutions offering certificates in food education. Just as privatization has taken many pathways, so has the open sharing of scientific knowledge: communities of practice, peer-to-peer sharing, and open access of different kinds. Neoliberalism looks to market solutions for all of society’s problems, and indeed is blind to mechanisms for meeting needs and solving problems that exist outside markets. Commodification and privatization require a disarticulation of knowledge from its context and history, whether this is, for example, the history of how seeds were domesticated over millennia, the use of the plethora of varieties of seeds by farmers all over the world, or why keeping multiple varieties in circulation is desirable.
