The Determinants of the Path of Technological Change in Agriculture: An Unorthodox View

This chapter seeks a closer understanding of how various influences are brought to bear in the development, by formal agricultural research, of new techniques and technologies in agriculture. In particular, it sheds light on why some technologies are chosen rather than others. An explanation is offered for the possibility of becoming locked-in to a particular way of doing agriculture. In so doing, an evolutionary metaphor is employed, from which perspective, different influences act as sources of selection pressure. These lead to the adoption of a path followed by research which determines which technologies may emerge from what are presumably myriad possibilities.