Routledge The Social Consequences And Challenges Of New Agricultural Technologies

Although formal social impact assessment of changing technologies in U.S. agriculture is still in its infancy, scholars have been documenting the effects of new technology throughout the twentieth century. In this collection, Prcfessors Berardi and Geisler bring together historically relevant research and a carefully chosen cross section of contemporary work. Their review of the literature is followed by an evaluation of the effects of mechanization on labor and production, written in 1904, which provides a backdrop for papers from the 1940s and 1950s examining the mechanization of agriculture in the South, in the Midwest, and in rural areas in general. Subsequent chapters offer present-day insights on such topics as the socioeconomic consequences of automated vegetable and tobacco harvesting, center-pivot irrigation, and organic and no-till cultivation. The authors also look at compensation and adjustment programs for displaced labor, the relationship between technology and agribusiness growth, and the effectiveness of university programs that prepare students to perform social impact assessments in agriculture. The edited proceedings of a spirited roundtable discussion on new directions for the study of the social impacts of farm technology and the political economy of agriculture provide the thought-provoking conclusion to this overview of the field. About the Author "Gigi M. Berardi is assistant professor of environmental science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She is a contributor to several volumes, including Food and Energy Resources (Hall and Pimental, eds.; 1983) and The Tobacco Industry in Transition: Policies for the Eighties (Finger, ed.; 1981). Charles C. Geisler is assistant professor of rural sociology at Cornell University and a research associate with COACT Research, Inc., in Madison, Wisconsin. He is coeditor of and contributor to Land Reform, American Style (Popper; 1984), Labor and the Environment: An Analysis of and Annotated Bibliography on Workplace and Environment Quality in the U. S. (Buttel and Wiswall; 1984), and Indian SIA: The Social Impact Assessment of Rapid Resource Development (Green, Usner, and West? 1982)."