Exploitative experiments? Organic farming in Sri Lanka

Paper in proceeding, 2010

Current food and ecological crises have given rise to fierce techno-scientific battles over the merits of "green revolution", organic, "integrated", and GM crop-based farming. However, the actual experimenting is often done - and the associated financial risks are often borne - by farmers in the poorer parts of the world. While STS has traditionally studied such techno-scientific disputes in the context of high-income countries, studies that feature power disparities created by the gap between the richer and poorer countries are less common. What happens when experimentation may involve exploitation? This paper discusses these issues, contextualising them in an ongoing ethnographic study of how various actors (farmers, western social entrepreneurs and aid organisations, agricultural instructors, civil society activists) engage with the issue of organic farming in Sri Lanka.