TECHNICAL PROGRESS: IS THE INDUSTRY THE WAY OUT?

Abstract

The waste and the violence against the quality of life seem to be the inevitable counterparts of the development of productive forces in agriculture. The two petroleum shocks contributed to a type of renewal of agronomic research and the keynote of the new research has centered on the idea that agriculture can find within itself the essential technical means to permit its development. From the theoretical point of view, this places in question the association common to marxist and neoclassical theories to the effect that an indissoluble association exists between technical progress and the division of labor so that the only means of development of the productive forces in agriculture are in industry. Agriculture, can, however, conquer greater independence from industry in regard to the technical basis of its production. The principal practical consequence of this fact is in the necessity of reorienting research and especially rural extension in such a way that the starting point for improved conditions of life in the rural area is, above all, in the understanding of how farmers themselves live and what their desires are.