Treading Lightly, Agriculture, and Focality

Many thinkers endorse an idea that we humans should leave nature alone or somehow exercise restraint in our relations to nature. Among those thinkers, we find several who take a critical or pessimistic attitude to modernity and modern life in general and to technology, or some specific technologies like genetic engineering in particular. In this chapter, I take a constructive approach starting with an exploration of Albert Borgmann’s idea of focal practices. I side with Paul B. Thompson in suggesting that agricultural systems offer some potential areas for such focal practices. I argue that even highly engineered environments should contain ‘pockets of focality’ and that those may provide ‘stepping stones’ from which a system can be changed. Finally, I argue that there is room for implementing some of these elements within a context of responsible research and innovation, for instance in the form of ethics committees for food and agricultural issues.