Farm knowledge: machines versus biotechnology

Abstract

Local farm knowledge is being eroded and, given its relevance to the viability of farm communities, ways have to be found to revive it. Young people often leave farming communities and with them this source of population, knowledge, and skill regeneration is lost to the farm community forever. This trend must be reversed and the loss of community knowledge be replaced by independent public universities and state research agencies, not by private generation of knowledge as has been the trend