In 2015, food and agriculture seldom left popular news headlines. Bee colonies continued to

inexplicably collapse across the United States and Europe, raising questions about pesticides,
diseases, ecological stress, or a potent combination as the cause. International regulatory
scientists concluded that Roundup (a pesticide widely used in combination with GM crops) is a
‘probable carcinogen’, instantly provoking industry actors into harsh rebuttal. Arguments erupted
over whether organic foods are healthier than conventional foods, whether intensification of
agriculture is needed to help ‘feed’ Africans, and if fats, sugars, and cholesterol in human diets
trigger harm. Rates of obesity and nutrient deficiency were accelerating in Mexico, China,
Egypt, Brazil, and many other regions, along with conflicting claims about their underlying
causes and health consequences.
As seen in these vignettes, numerous areas of science and technology transect food and
agriculture. Looking beyond the news, we can identify the prevalent use of science and
technology discourses by governments, companies, international institutions, scientists, and
NGOs to support their knowledge claims. The Royal Society invokes demographic data
projecting a population of 9 billion people by 2050 to justify neo-Malthusian ‘sustainable
intensification’ (Royal Society 2009). Philanthropic donors represent GM crops as essential to
meet the coming trials of climate change. Food scientists seek to ‘healthify’ processed foods
through biofortified crops or nutraceuticals, a portmanteau of pharmacy and nutrition based on
isolated nutrients. These knowledge claims often depict agri-food systems as enterprises
progressing linearly and inexorably from primitive to industrialized forms. They rely on
partitions of science from politics, and of technological solutions from socio-cultural contexts –
practices long discredited within STS, yet persistent and prospering in many scientific and
bureaucratic communities of practice.
Looking more intently, we can discern pervasive, systematic inclusions and exclusions of actors
and knowledge inside agri-food systems; the divides seem natural but emerge through the
everyday, boundary-drawing decisions and practices of these systems (e.g., Gieryn 1999). For
example, bureaucratic agencies favor quantitative risk assessments of food safety to the
exclusion of experiential knowledge of people on farms and in processing factories. Pesticide
companies ridicule the possibility of agroecological science regulating pests through ecological,
not chemical, means. Above all, ecological and social diversity – and their associated
knowledges – are tainted as ‘anachronistic’ and ‘inefficient’. Constructivist analysis, then,
remains critical to revealing how modern agri-food systems are shored up – yet also challenged
and altered – by science and technology.
We first discuss how taking a coproduction idiom can help organize what is a remarkably
disparate STS literature, and make visible the mutual constitution of agri-food systems and

technoscientific developments. We then review four loci of STS scholarship on food and

agriculture, accentuating how this work has become more diverse in its geography, topics,
methods, and participants. We present two cases to illustrate how coproduction can provide
novel insight: the intersections between agrobiodiversity, farmer knowledge, and plant breeding
IP; and between pollinators, industrial food, and scientific knowledge. We conclude by arguing
that visualizing coproduction can enable renewed agency and promote the re-conceptualization
of food systems around diversity, not homogeneity.