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Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Feld: Eine Wissensgeschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft.

The book is vast in chronological scope, covering 200 years of agricultural history, with particular emphasis on the time from 1880 to the present. It is based to a great extent on primary source material due to the absence of much scholarly work in this field. It combines three goals. First, it provides an overview on the history of agricultural science and technology. Second, it discusses how bringing knowledge back in challenges conventional readings of agricultural history in Germany and beyond. Third, the monograph develops perspectives for a history of knowledge and its necessary complement, the history of ignorance.

This book offers a reinterpretation of German agricultural history during the modern era. Looking at the knowledge base of farming and its change over time, it shows how the network of scientists, advisors and practitioners developed into an iron cage that allowed only one path of agricultural development in the post-war years, thus conditioning political decisions in important ways. The book discusses a severely neglected field in the history of science and technology and shows the extent to which farming is a knowledge-based enterprise – and how much we gain in agricultural history when we take note of this fact.