Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), p. 178

The focus of Art and science in breeding is North American chicken production over the period c.1850–1960. The chicken in this case provides a case study for the application of science within agriculture, and the book might be situated as easily within the history of science and technology as within the history of agriculture. In this way it is aligned with emerging histories of twentieth-century agriculture, such as Abigail Woods’s Rethinking the history of modern agriculture: pig production in mid-20th century Britain (2012) on the application of innovation within pig farming in the UK. Such an approach is innovative, but it is clear, as more histories of twentieth-century agricultural practice begin to emerge, that it will become more and more essential in order to fully understand topics peculiar to the period, like intensification. Within British agricultural history, there has been little written on the specific subject of modern poultry production, bar Brian Short’s essay ‘The art and craft of chicken cramming’ (1982), which outlined the rise and fall of the ‘cramming’ business on the Sussex Weald, 1850–1950, and Joanna Bourke’s essay ‘Women and poultry in Ireland, 1891–1914’ (1987). In part, this may be due to the decline in poultry production, identified by Joan Thirsk in her Alternative agriculture, but specialization in the industry certainly began to take off from the inter-war period, as Andrew Godley and Bridget Williams have shown with reference to poultry meat production in their ‘Democratizing luxury and the contentious “invention of the technological chicken” in Britain’ (2009). And, though there were initially marked regional differences and, as Michael Winstanley has suggested, much less vertical integration in the UK compared to North America, this was nonetheless an industry which shared much in terms of innovation across international borders, and as such Derry’s book makes a significant contribution to the field.

In the Introduction Derry establishes that her approach draws on the scientific literature around selection and breeding, and that the book focuses on the development of agricultural genetics. To gain a better understanding of the application of the science, or indeed breeders’ own developments, Derry also sought out practitioners and found that in many instances the only way to confirm her findings, especially for the period after 1940, was through interviews because there was little documentation available. This in and of itself is worthy of note for historians seeking to undertake work in the post-war period.

The book is then structured thematically. The first chapter establishes the historical background to chicken breeding in North America, from domestication to the mid-nineteenth century. Much of the account here focuses on Britain, in the European context, to set the scene. Here Derry also establishes the field of chicken breeding within the wider context of livestock production, something which she has published on before and knows well, and tackles the establishment of societies and the organization of breeding between 1700 and 1900. The chapter is well illustrated, as are they all, and the captions help illuminate the topic. After this, the remaining chapters focus largely on North America, and address the development of fancy breeds, the growth of agricultural genetics, breeding for eggs, the perception of breeding, the rise of the broiler industry, and finishes with an epilogue on post-1950 trends. Throughout she is interested in the tension that emerged between breeding as ‘science’ and breeding as ‘craft’.

Throughout the modern period there appears to have been a tension, Derry argues, between the supposed aim of improvers to engage in scientific practice, and the tendency of producers to resist scientific innovation, or at least to continue to act on the basis of their own experience without reference to the scientific literature. Derry observes that the literature of the period 1900–50 is frequently opaque as to the precise relationship between science and agriculture at the time. It has therefore frequently been thought that practical breeders worldwide found the studies of academic geneticists of little or no use. By focusing on chicken breeding Derry, however, has been able to throw much greater light on the complexities of the interrelationship between the scientific literature and the livestock industry. She argues that the work of breeders in Europe during the nineteenth century, for example the establishment of breeding standards amongst fancy exhibitors in Britain, established the pattern for the structural relationship between scientific and ‘craft’ breeding in the later period. Despite the rhetoric and shift in interest to utility over appearance, breeding strategies also stayed the same, and chicken breeders today still use nineteenth-century craft breeding methods. Much of their activity has simply been rebadged as scientific or as genetics. Yet, there were also changes among these continuities, and also marked differences in outlook driven by emerging and changing commercial interests, and the redefinition of traditional practices hides the actual contributions made by genetics, for example through modern data handling and analysis. Derry charts these extraordinarily obscure and muddy waters with great clarity and thereby makes an important contribution to both the field of agricultural history and to the history of science.