‘I wouldn’t want to be a cow’: An ethnographic exploration of more-than-human relational praxis on a New Zealand dairy farm

<p>This thesis aims to understand how industrial farmers perceive and relate to the nonhuman world. A small-scale ethnographic focus of a 250-cow dairy farm in New Zealand’s Rangitikei district is presented as a proxy for approaching the underexamined field of farming ontologies. A common narrative exists that western ontology is characterised by human exceptionalism, a belief in humanity as singularly subjective beings amid a mute and objective world. Contrary to this discourse, this thesis finds that farmer relations to the nonhuman world are multiple, complex and contingent. This thesis employs Annemarie Mol’s (2002) understanding of ontology as established through practice, and thereby multiple, in conjunction with a material analysis of the farm as a composite ecology of human and nonhuman agents. I argue that industrial agricultural practice is informed both by transcendent, objectivist logics, and by co-constituted, informal knowledge formed through co-habitation of multispecies lifeworlds. The unruly agency of lively materials, and the affective and intersubjective qualities of interspecies interactions, are shown to figure conditionally in farming practice. These components are managed within the bounds of industrial agriculture’s outwardly utilitarian and anthropocentric systems through responsive practices of care and attentiveness, revealing that an attribution of nonhuman agency and subjectivity is essential to industrial farming practice.</p>

‘I wouldn’t want to be a cow’: An ethnographic exploration of more-than-human relational praxis on a New Zealand dairy farm

<p>This thesis aims to understand how industrial farmers perceive and relate to the nonhuman world. A small-scale ethnographic focus of a 250-cow dairy farm in New Zealand’s Rangitikei district is presented as a proxy for approaching the underexamined field of farming ontologies. A common narrative exists that western ontology is characterised by human exceptionalism, a belief in humanity as singularly subjective beings amid a mute and objective world. Contrary to this discourse, this thesis finds that farmer relations to the nonhuman world are multiple, complex and contingent. This thesis employs Annemarie Mol’s (2002) understanding of ontology as established through practice, and thereby multiple, in conjunction with a material analysis of the farm as a composite ecology of human and nonhuman agents. I argue that industrial agricultural practice is informed both by transcendent, objectivist logics, and by co-constituted, informal knowledge formed through co-habitation of multispecies lifeworlds. The unruly agency of lively materials, and the affective and intersubjective qualities of interspecies interactions, are shown to figure conditionally in farming practice. These components are managed within the bounds of industrial agriculture’s outwardly utilitarian and anthropocentric systems through responsive practices of care and attentiveness, revealing that an attribution of nonhuman agency and subjectivity is essential to industrial farming practice.</p>

Re-thinking public health: Towards a new scientific logic of routine animal health care in European industrial farming

This study makes the case for a new scientific logic of routine animal health care in industrial farming in Europe. We argue that the social regime underpinning scientific research and development on chronic animal disease management (CADM) in Europe stifles innovation and sustains a productivist model of animal husbandry that facilitates and maintains chronic animal diseases rather than eliminating them. Drawing on documentary analysis and qualitative interviews, the study explores the science of CADM in the broiler, cattle and pig sectors of the European food industry. Our findings show that in these major sectors, research and development on CADM is largely orientated towards a logic of growth, profitability and control rather than a recognition of the interconnection between chronic animal diseases, the food industry, and people (especially consumers) as advocated by the One Health approach. The study contributes to the literature on medical humanities and science and technology studies within One Health and public health in two ways: First, we draw new focus towards chronic animal diseases that are non-transmissible to humans and argue that while these are not zoonoses, they are equally worthy of attention for managing the emergence of new pathogens and diseases. Second, we expand the conceptualisation of One Health to include chronic animal health conditions. Our argument is that public health as an outcome of the One Health approach should be a term of reference that applies to humans and nonhumans alike whether they be farmed animals, practitioners or consumers.

Are Livestock Always Bad for the Planet? Rethinking the Protein Transition and Climate Change Debate

Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction if not elimination of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on patchy evidence, are failing to differentiate between varied landscapes, environments and production methods. Relatively low-impact, extensive livestock production, such as pastoralism, is being lumped in with industrial systems in the conversation about the future of food. This report warns that the dominant picture of livestock’s impacts on climate change has been distorted by faulty assumptions that focus on intensive, industrial farming in rich countries. Millions of people worldwide who depend on extensive livestock production, with relatively lower climate impacts, are being ignored by debates on the future of food. The report identifies ten flaws in the way that livestock’s climate impacts have been assessed, and suggests how pastoralists could be better included in future debates about food and the climate.

Towards Evidence Based Policy Making in GIAHS: Convention Theory and Effects of GIAHS Registration on the Wholesale and Retail Trade of Traditional and Local Vegetables

This study examines how the registration of certain agricultural regions affects the sales of vegetables classified as traditional. We focused on the sales trends of traditional vegetables from the Noto region, one of the first designated sites of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). We compared the sales of recognized traditional vegetables to those of similar traditional vegetables from nearby areas and vegetables labeled with the same place names as the traditional vegetables but without elements of traditionality in branding. The study analyzed the sale and relevant trends of four categories of vegetable: Kaga vegetables, vegetables labeled “Kaga”, Noto vegetables, and vegetables labeled “Noto”. We further analyzed the trends by applying Convention Theory to understand the underpinning “orders of worth” in the purchase and sale of the items. Both Noto vegetables and place-labeled vegetables increased in overall sales since GIAHS registration in 2011. The recent increases in sales volume and number of items, however, were largely due to the production of lettuce, a crop from a vegetable factory. By applying Convention Theory, we identified that in the agriculture of the region, industrial farming impacted even the GIAHS registered site. Thus, careful collection and analysis of evidence is necessary to evaluate the effects of GIAHS registration and draft an action plan for further evidence-based policy making.

Effectiveness of Sustainable Agriculture and Industrial Agriculture in Africa

The aim of this analysis is to examine the efficacy of sustainable farming in Africa and industrial farming. Sustainable agriculture as an approach to food production that combines agriculture's economic, social and environmental dimensions. The agricultural societies in Asia and Africa have effectively followed these values. The growing evidence and accessible scientific review of the creation of programs suggests that sustainable interventions can be highly successful to enhance productivity, promote protection of soil and water incomes and to ensure food safety; improve agricultural, wildlife and plant health; increase natural disasters and climate change resistance, minimize greenhouse gas emissions and promote societies. This demonstrates that the efficiency of organic farming has a positive influence in different countries on the future of agriculture.

The Sprouting Farms: You Are What You Grow

In 2017, the Singaporean government unveiled the Farm Transformation Map, a highly technology-driven initiative that intends to change its current, near-total dependence on imported food. The plan focuses on the prospect of high-productivity farming—in particular, integrated vertical, indoor, and intensive urban farming—as a possible solution to geopolitical uncertainty, intense urbanisation, and environmental degradation. What to farm (or not) and how to farm has long mediated social, cultural, political, and environmental relations. Following the stories of a few small- to medium-scale urban farms, including rooftop gardens, community farms, and organic farms, in this future-oriented city polis, this article explores the rise of urban farming through the politics of localism and the notion of care. How has localism, in some contexts, been reduced to a narrow sense of geographic location? What is being cared for in and through farming in urban locales? How might this type of farming transform and shape bio-cultural, social-technological relations within humans, and between humans and non-humans? More importantly, this article explores how urban agriculture might forge a kind of thick localism rooted in situated care as it carries out social missions, experimenting with and subverting the dominant imaginary of industrial farming.