Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
A truck delivers the seeds directly to the farm or the farmer has to order from the regional
seed company. With the seeds, the farmer receives a complete set of inputs, which includes
mineral fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. These artifacts are the preconditions to
organize and to conduct this type of farming. The practice to order these agricultural inputs
does not require a long search process; all is advertised and supplied by firms; purchasing
these inputs is a routined process of given bio-chemical materialities. These practices take
place every fall and spring, at the same sites with the same technology and within the same
social web; they are site and time specific.
The practice of this style of farming needs a certain materiality of big tractors with an air
conditioned cab, driving up and down a field with a size of several football fields, in a
cleared out landscape, plowing the soil, talking on a cell phone, watching a movie or TV. It
means sitting in a tractor, and activating electronically controlled steering mechanisms. The
physical landscape, the technology, but also the knowledge order given by agro-industry,
the farmer translates into a certain agricultural practice in his specific farm context; they all
hang together and the practice would not exist without each of these artifacts. These
practices became routines and are unquestioned orientation for practicing corn-soybean
agriculture. They are also confirmed in official statements, documents, internet pages, or
news journals of the agricultural administration and industry and by a majority of
agricultural researchers.
The farmer handles the tractor computer with a GPS to spray the exact amount of mineral
fertilizer or pesticide, using a technique prepared and recommended from agro-industry.
The farmer (or any company using airplanes for spraying) repeats the pattern of practice
carried out while plowing: driving precisely row by row, up and down the mainly
rectangular field. In the tractor cabin and “protected” from outside, the farmer is unable to
listen to or smell nature.
The site where the inputs of farming are created/produced/prepared/collected is off the
farm. At the same time, “farming practices' are carried out by one person in “cooperation”
with technological artifacts. Interaction with nature is limited as electronic devices, which
“interpret” nature and guide the practices, give most of the relevant information for the
practice. The moral justification for using chemicals exists in the conviction of 'we are
feeding the world'.
The industrial artifacts with bio-chemical and biological characteristics are transported over
long distances, figured out by humans who are acting in an anonymous web of relations,
and materialized in communication technologies. Machinery (tractor…), the biochemical
and biological artifacts and related practices to produce them, are dislocated from the farm
over long distances. They move towards farms and are stored temporarily in the farm barn.
For that, the farmer uses a front loader to stack the bags in one part of his barn. These
practices describe parts of the energy flow, and the accompanying technological and social
constellations, which enable the transfer/movement of materiality from site to site - from
outside to inside the farm, and from site to site within the farm.
Harvest might be done together with additional personnel or is out-sourced to specialized
companies. Efficient use of harvest technology again requires a certain field size and form -
landscape design is also part of the specific harvest practice (cf. Shove et al. 2007, 134).
Harvest itself takes place in several days, again with powerful technical equipment. Parts of
the harvest might be stored on the farm in a storehouse, which do not look any different
from buildings in a suburban industrial zone, or is directly transferred with large trucks
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