Prong 2 – Re-Designing Education for Agricultural Students and their Teachers (Part III) Prof. Gregory Radick How values acquired in the genetics classroom might translate to farming practice Near the beginning of this position paper we gestured briefly toward some links between Mendelian genetics, with its distinctive emphasis on hybrid seeds, and post-Green-Revolution high-yield, industrially farmed, chemically saturated agriculture.  With the two genetics pedagogies in view, we can now pursue a further question: What, exactly, might the affinities be between…

Prong 2 – Re-Designing Education for Agricultural Students and their Teachers (Part II) Prof. Gregory Radick “Genes, environments, and variability” genetics teaching: There is, fortunately, another way. For some while, PI Radick, as a historian of science, has been re-examining the debate that broke out over Mendel’s experiments after the 1900 rediscovery of his paper on them.[1] The debate was most intense between the Cambridge-based William Bateson, who did more than anyone to promote Mendel’s work as the foundation for…

In the next (four-part) post in the ongoing blog post series on The Sustainable Seed Innovations Project), Prof. Gregory Radick provides an overview of the educationally focused “second prong” of the position paper’s three-prong approach. He discusses the need to redesign elements of agricultural training to ensure a better fit with the goal of greater sustainability, looking in particular at how his historical research into the organization of knowledge in two areas — Mendelian genetics and intellectual property — has…

The first farmer story by Natalie Kopytko, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Leeds (in the ongoing blog post series on The Sustainable Seed Innovations Project) demonstrated how traditional knowledge can be applied in new innovative ways and that farmers are unable to financially benefit despite Geographical Indications. This second story demonstrates how traditional ecological knowledge, specifically seed selection in Assam, led to the wide range of rice varieties cultivated today. These stories provide clear examples of the achievements of innovative…