Past, Present and Future 1714 they span a ‘universe of the undisputed’: a universe of things that are the way
they are because they can only be the way they are.
All this is emphasized by those who do dispute this universe: sooner or later they
are exposed as charlatans.^45
However high the theoretical and communicative consistencies, the problem
is that this set of axioms no longer corresponds to reality. This need not be a prob-
lem if it were not that, first, policy making, implementation and evaluation are
consistently informed from the point of view of the virtual farmer, and, second,
the same image is a heavy burden on the urgent search for new alternatives for an
agriculture that is partly deadlocked within these axioms.
The axioms share above all the common feature that they specify the agricul-
ture of the future. They tell a story about the direction in which agriculture should
move. That story is not told, however, in terms of opportunities inherent in the
current reality (see Figure 8.1b). It concerns one necessary and inevitable future
(Figure 8.1c). This may seem unlikely – the point is, however, that this one future
is supported by a series of iron laws contained in the past and the present. The
axioms refer to two aspects: they define history thus far as the inevitable unfolding
of structural patterns, after which the future is represented as the perfecting of such
a process of unfolding.
The cognitive monopoly of the expert system is crucial here. There is only one
actor, only one institution, capable of knowing the patterns and hence the future:
the expert system in and around agriculture. An expert system that is increasingly
forged into a unity, also in organizational terms.
Somos lo que vamos a ser, we are on our way to the future. Future-oriented act-
ing makes us what we are, especially because so many different options, roads,
interests and identities are at issue in working towards the future. In the agricul-
tural sector (but probably also elsewhere), however, the future has increasingly
been parcelled out, completed and allocated beforehand by the expert systems,
which specialise in this activity. And the more the expert systems appropriate the
future, the firmer their hold on the ‘existence’ of those involved, in this case, inter
alia, Dutch farmers. All their actions are increasingly conditioned and ordered by
the future, which is monopolized by expert systems. Hence, the former are gov-
erned by the latter via the future.
This book is a critique of the expert system, of the semi-coherent whole con-
stituted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries (LNV,
ministerie van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Visserij), Wageningen University, Dienst
Landbouwkundig Onderzoek (DLO, Agricultural Research Institute) and other
research institutes, parts of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the
Environment (VROM, ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en
Milieubeheer), Dienst Landbouwvoorlichting (DLV, Agricultural Advisory Service,
now privatised as DLV Adviesgroep NV), parts of the provincial authorities – in
short, by the complex set that interacts with the agricultural sector on the basis of
real or assumed knowledge.