Past, Present and Future 167Agriculture as Empirical Object
Agriculture as a particular empirical phenomenon presents complications, but also
a certain advantage. The advantage can be described easily. The search for and
creation of congruence and consistency within projects (between the natural and
the social) as well as between projects, the subsequent complexity of the coordina-
tion issue, and the sometimes inclusive, at other times radical, nature of the varia-
tion and selection processes make their presence felt more in agriculture than in
other areas. Why? In agriculture, there is always and everywhere an enormous
number of actors. There are now about 110,000 farms in The Netherlands, involv-
ing more than 300,000 workers. Furthermore, there is an immense agribusiness: a
set of enterprises supplying commodities and services to the primary sector. A
further 250,000 workers are involved in this.
In contrast to various other sectors, this complex and variegated whole, this
multitude of projects, cannot and does not allow itself to be managed like a com-
mand economy. Coordination is essential, particularly in and around agriculture.
In addition, present, past and future fall continuously on top of each other, some-
times in the most bizarre ways. This makes contemporary agriculture such a fertile,
yet difficult, empirical territory for the issues under scrutiny here.
Two issues should be clarified from the outset. They concern the relation
between the words and the things, and between things.
There once was a time when it was felt that The Netherlands were 20 years
behind the rest of the world – Germany acted as the most direct point of reference.
Similarly, agriculture and the countryside were seen as being 20 years behind the
rest of society, i.e. the city.^40 All in all, this does not do agriculture and the coun-
tryside much good. It is hard to imagine them without the stigmas of slowness and
tradition, of reluctance and resistance to adopt that which has been widely accepted
elsewhere for some time. Incidents, discussions, images and events that seem to
support such an interpretation are not difficult to find.
What needs to be stated clearly and resolutely is that the agricultural sector is
often more modern, progressive, dynamic and innovative than the rest of society.
Not 40 years behind but in some ways 10, sometimes 30 years ahead. However,
this applies (let me dampen the fun at once) not only in a positive sense but also
in a negative one.
In the conventional view of agriculture, the countryside is seen as intrinsically
traditional and conservative. While the rest of society had thrown off the shackles
of the past, the modernization project only began to become defined in agriculture
in the late 1950s. Backwardness rules, certainly if we realize that at the end of the
20th century things have still not been put right.
In this conventional image, the relation between the words and the things is
completely amiss, persistently amiss. For, even though these are established self-
evident habits, or an institutionalized view, it has to be stated that the relationship
between the notions employed and the practices grasped and interpreted with
these notions suffers on all sides.