Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exploring on-farm innovation, environmental change, and rural livelihoods in the US hop industry

北美的农业技术发展在很大程度上是由控制机械、植物遗传学和农用化学品创新的大公司主导的。然而，啤酒花种植是一个让这种模式困惑的农业产业。啤酒花是一种用于酿造啤酒的草药，许多大型雅基马山谷啤酒花种植者都投资于当地的育种计划和农场基础设施创新。该项目的目标是了解一些农民研究和开发自己的农业技术而另一些农民依赖外部研究的条件，并检查这些不同的农业技术方法所产生的创新。美国的啤酒花种植为了解这些差异提供了一个自然的实验。该项目通过对农场的访问和对农场所有者和经营者的深入访谈，从啤酒花种植者那里收集数据，以更好地了解美国西北部和中西部啤酒花种植的社会和应用科学世界。这样做有可能有助于加强对将农民作为研究贡献者如何为美国农业带来更有活力和可持续的农业和环境未来的理解。利用通过现场访谈和农场参与者观察收集的定性数据，该项目回应了两个核心研究问题：(1)环境和市场压力如何影响啤酒花农场使用技术的决策？(2)啤酒花生产商对其他农业食品制度的环境和技术考虑有什么比较经验教训？在啤酒花农民新颖的农业实践的背景下回答这些问题，可以深入了解人类技术前沿对劳动力、文化和环境的广泛社会关注。在研究农业实践时，这一点尤其明显，因为遗传和机械技术创新已被广泛采用，损害了农民的利润和农业社区的社会健康。啤酒花种植者作为农场创新者的独特地位为相关行业的农业技术替代未来提供了见解。该项目通过批判性地考虑专家农业科学知识的产生和维护，以及通过质疑谁可能被认为是农业科学，特别是植物科学方面的专家，为STS和环境社会学的研究话语做出了贡献。这些问题的含义对于农业和环境部门的基于科学的政策是重要的，如果这些政策既要具有包容性又要以证据为基础。这项原创研究为其他规模农业的传统模式的潜在环境替代方案提供了新的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Agricultural technological development in North America has been largely directed by large companies controlling innovations in machinery, plant genetics, and agrichemicals. However, hop growing is one agricultural industry that confounds this model. Hops are an herb used in beer-making applications and many of the large Yakima Valley hop growers have invested both in local breeding programs and on-farm infrastructure innovations. The goal of this project is to understand the conditions under which some farmers research and develop their own agricultural technologies while others rely on outside research and to examine the innovations yielded by these diverging approaches to agricultural technologies. Hop farming in the United States offers a natural experiment to understand these differences. This project collects data from hop farmers through on-farm visits and in-depth interviews with farm owners and operators to better understand the social and applied scientific worlds of hop growing in the Northwestern and Midwestern United States. Doing so has the potential to help enhance understanding of how including farmers as research contributors may yield a more vibrant and sustainable agricultural and environmental future for farming in the United States.Drawing on qualitative data collected through on-site interviews and on-farm participant observation, this project responds to two core research questions: (1) How do environmental and market pressures impact decisions about technologies used on the hop farm? (2) What comparative lessons do hop producers have for environmental and technical considerations in other agri-food regimes? Responding to these questions in the context of hop farmers’ novel agricultural practices yields insights into broad societal concerns about labor, culture, and environment at the human-technology frontier. This is especially evident when studying agricultural practices where genetic and mechanical technological innovation has widely been employed to the detriment of farmer profits and the social health of farming communities. The unique position of hop farmers as on-farm innovators yields insights for alternative futures for agricultural technologies in cognate industries. This project contributes to research discourses in both STS and environmental sociology by critically considering where expert agricultural scientific knowledge is produced and maintained, and by questioning who may be considered an expert in agricultural science, particularly plant science. The implications of these queries are important for science-based policy in agricultural and environmental sectors if such policies are to be both inclusive as well as evidence-based. This original research provides novel insights into potential environmental alternatives to conventional models for other agricultures of scale.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.