New Policies and New Skills: Agricultural Change and Technology Transfer

This paper examines the case that farmers need new skills and knowledge if environmentally sustainable agriculture is to be achieved. The first part of the paper looks at policy transition in agriculture in England, examining the extent to which agricultural policy is now environmentally driven. Secondly, the nature of knowledge is subject to examination. This section is more speculative and suggestive leading to the third element in this paper—the need to bring farmers back into the analysis. In both policy analysis and the literature of technology transfer there is a danger that farmers are seen merely as passive recipients and not active participants. The importance of farmers’ own knowledge is stressed in a call for fresh research and a fundamental re-orientation of the current debate on technology transfer in agriculture. In diesem Artikel wird herausgearbeitet, das Landwirte neue Fahigkeiten und Kenntnisse benotigen, wenn eine okologisch nachhaltige Landwirtschaft erreicht werden soll. Im ersten Teil des Beitrags wird der Wandel in der Landwirtschaftspolitik in England daraufhin betrachtet, in welchem Ausmas die Agrarpolitik heute durch Umweltbelange bestimmt wird. Sodann wird die Struktur des Wissens untersucht. Dieser Abschnitt hat eher spekulativen und heuristischen Charakter. Er leitet uber zu dem dritten Teil des Artikels, namlich die Notwendigkeit, Landwirte wider in die Analyse miteinzubeziehen. Sowohl in der politikanalyse als auch in der Literatur zum Technologietransfer besteht die Gefahr, das Landwirte lediglich als passive Empfanger und nicht als aktive Teilnehmer gesehen werden. Der Bedeutung des Erfahrungswissens der Landwirte wird dadurch Nachdruck verliehen, das neue Untersuchungen und eine grundlegende Umorientierung in der gegenwartigen Debatte uber den Technologietransfer in der Landwirtschaft eingefordert werden.

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