On the movement of agricultural technologies: Packaging, unpacking and situated reconfiguration

In this chapter, we examine how farming technologies move between places and how they are unpacked and ‘grounded’ in particular spaces and contexts. We argue that a better understanding of how this process occurs helps to shed light on a source of contestation within agronomy. We discuss two farming technologies that have been at the centre of controversial debates among experts, policy makers and the wider public: the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and drip irrigation. We argue that these technologies have been contested partly because important social dimensions have been neglected, which have led to the technologies being configured and appreciated differently in different sites. Here, we use the term sites to include farmers’ fields, experimental stations and laboratories, research and training centres, as well as discursive spaces such as agricultural and natural resource policies and research publications.