The introduction of computer-based information systems to be used by farmers, as in many other fields, is preceded mostly by great expectations. Some persons even tend to think that eventually the computer might take over farm management. This article tries to make an assessment of the validity of such expectations. Based upon a study among Swedish farmers, it examines the nature of farmers' decision-making. The latter is based upon an adaptive rationality, as opposed to the normative models of formal rationality (...) used by scientists. Essential to this rationality are coordination skills: the ability of farmers to arrange the many interacting factors important to the totality of a farm in a satisfactory way. What the farmer needs in this complex situation is personal communication and tacit knowledge, knowledge that cannot be reduced to facts and rules. Consequently computer-based information systems can be useful tools only in some aspects of farm management, but they will never replace farmer's decision-making. To understand the possibilities of the computer as a tool in farm management, a distinction between interpretation skills and application skills is necessary. (shrink)

I start my essay by recalling the resistance at my university towards some groundbreaking results from environmental and global food production research in the early 1960s, when I was a student in agricultural sciences. I describe this resistance as academic inertia originating from group think in the scientific community. I argue that the problems we face today in our search for sustainable development on a global level require a long-term and broad systems approach in research. I conclude that the predominant (...) scientific paradigm, which I define as the control paradigm, is insufficient given its inbuilt reductionist bias. We need the complement of a paradigm entailing a holistic perspective, which I call the co-existence paradigm. I explore how academic inertia and an increasingly competitive culture in the academic world counteract this development. Students at Uppsala University have managed to cross the boundaries of academic inertia in this area by establishing a Center for Environment and Development Studies which pursues a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective. The student-run center, called Cemus, has successfully acted as a force for renewal in academia for two decades. I describe how the center works and suggest that Cemus represents a model for institutionalizing renewal in academia that fills an essential function and is applicable for any university in a democratic society. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Swedish Agricultural Extension Service has delivered technical information to farmers with the aim of increasing productivity and efficiency in farming. Present problems with overproduction of food and the negative social and environmental consequences of present farm practices has brought this traditional mission in question. In a situation of budgetary constraints it has been suggested that the funding of the governmental Agricultural Extension Service should be cut down or even discontinued altogetherThe article argues that this would be a mistake. (...) The various negative consequences of modern agriculture indicate that we are far from an ideal mode of agricultural production. Instead, public opinion and new guidelines for agricultural and environmental policies call for substantial changes in Swedish agriculture with respect to pollution, preservation of non-renewable resources, maintaining an open rural landscape, ethical aspects of animal production, rural development etc.This reorientation of Swedish agriculture presumes that decision-makers, farmers, and the public at large get an opportunity to learn more about the complexities of agricultural production. In contributing to this learning process the Agricultural Extension Service would have an important mission. To be able to fulfill this mission, extension professionals must be provided an opportunity to learn a broader concept of productivity and efficiency in agriculture, for instance, how to extend cost-benefit analyses and technical criteria of efficiency to include social, environmental, and ethical aspects. Our present extension staff has not received adequate training for this task. It is suggested that all agricultural colleges need to create departments of Rural Sociology and Agricultural Humanities to provide agricultural students and professionals an opportunity to develop a better understanding of agriculture and make them prepared to take on the challenges and responsibilities they confront in developing our future agriculture. (shrink)