How farmers adopt new technologies: connections between farmer and technician knowledges in Galicia (NW Iberian Peninsula) (1880–1940)

Abstract

Who chooses new technology? And how? In this article, we explore the diffusion of agricultural science and technology in Galicia (Spain), and the ways in which farmers adopted innovations in the period of 1880–1940 within the Atlantic Iberian agricultural context of small farms. To answer these questions, we adopt a socio-institutional approach and also an environmental one, changes in breeding techniques and the creation of the Galician Blond cow, as well as the widespread use of threshing machines, which were two closely related innovations in the context of mixed farming agriculture. These two examples illustrate the fusion of science-based and practice-based agriculture, and how technology did not threaten community or family equilibrium; instead, it empowered processes that were already operative in affirming small-scale farming.