Agricultural Ethics

This is an informal introduction to a series of essays on agricultural ethics. These essays have been solicited from people who have thought about the choices we face and the decisions we must make as we try to balance feeding the world’s expected 9 billion people with the need to preserve the food-producing capacity and the natural ecosystems of the Earth for future generations. The goal of this first article is simply to raise some questions that will be expanded upon by others and to show how complex the issues are. Ethics is about choices, and agricultural ethics is about choices for people engaged in agriculture either directly as farmers, or indirectly as government regulators, extension agents, researchers, CEOs, industrial workers, lawmakers, technology developers, consumers, or protestors. Although all of us make choices, few of us actively engage in an ethical analysis of our actions or can provide reasons for the choices we make. Different “definitions” of ethics are in use daily by the general public. Here, right or wrong, are a few to ponder. (a) Ethics is adherence to the spirit and the letter of the law. People who claim that they “have done nothing wrong” after they are caught in a legal but unsavory action often use this interpretation of ethics. (b) Ethics is adherence to a religious belief. (c) Ethics is adherence to “community or cultural standards.” (d) Ethics is adherence to my ideas. In contrast, ethicists use definitions that are more complex and may contain elements of all these common notions about what is ethical and what is not. It is not practical here to make a blanket definition of ethics because many have devoted their professional lives to that goal. Each of the authors in this series will make their own views clear on that subject. This series is designed to encourage us to think about the wider implications that our work has on society. Some of our choices, well or ill considered, ethical or not, are being questioned by people who have visions for agriculture that differ from the prevailing paradigm. We live in a time when many are questioning the priorities of our food production systems and confronting us with our role in it. This essay and the series that follow is intended to help us as professionals in plant biology to listen to them and examine our own beliefs, values, and morals and then reconsider our choices from this new, more well-rounded perspective.