Many studies reveal the contributions of plant breeding and agronomy to farm productivity and their role in reshaping global diets. However, historical accounts also implicate these sciences in the creation of new problems, from novel disease vulnerabilities propagated through industrial monocrops to the negative ecological and public health consequences of crops dependent on chemical inputs and industrialized food systems more generally.

       Increasingly, historical analyses also highlight the expertise variously usurped, overlooked, abandoned, or suppressed in the pursuit of “modern” agricultural science. Experiment stations and “improved” plants were instruments of colonialism, means of controlling lands and lives of peoples typically labeled as “primitive” and “backward” by imperial authorities. In many cases, the assumptions of colonial improvers persisted in the international development programs that have sought since the mid-20th century to deliver “modern” science to farming communities in the Global South.

         Awareness of these issues has brought alternative domains of crop science such as agroecology to the fore in recent decades, as researchers reconcile the need for robust crop knowledge and know-how with the imperatives of addressing social and environmental injustice.