The Transformation to Organic: Insights from Practice Theory - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 181

towards a train station or a regional storage building. And finally, the truck dimensions
require a certain size of road system in the landscape between the fields.
Farm practices require certain architecture, and architecture enables the practice. Using
inputs from outside the farm has its impact on farm architecture, barn structure, storage
buildings and daily routines, the design of the farm yard and the stretches of roads and
paths in the farm yard, as well as towards the fields or to buying and selling points for
agricultural inputs or the harvest.
The materiality of non-organic agriculture pre-structures the daily practices and the labor
distribution year round, it forms the landscapes, the colors of nature, the smell and the
structures of the fields, the soil and water quality, and the (non-) existence of biotopes or the
biodiversity of plant and animal species.
Fieldwork constructs a farmer's annual schedule. The farmer waits for best weather
conditions, or is informed by the regional agriculture weather report, when to start with
fieldwork. Fieldwork is done in two, or a maximum of three time periods in early and later
spring and finally at a crop's specific harvest times by the farmer or with workers. These
industrial and nature preformed practices not only structure daily life, but also occur at
specific times over the year and thereby structure the whole year on the farm, largely
independent of any individual decisions.
Farmers slightly modify their practices every year by adopting new industrial products and
adapting to changing weather conditions. Tolerance for reformulating or reshaping the
practices by the farmer is limited. Natural science and technological knowledge is
embedded in the artifacts, produced and recommended by a disciplinary oriented science.
Industrialized agriculture is an example for social practices which are characterized by
reproduction, while change is limited (Reckwitz 2002a, 255, in Bueger and Gadinger 2010,
289). Farmers are the carriers of the materialized industrial products on the landscape, and
landscapes in turn are patterns of these practices.
The materialized production program also influences relations with consumers - the
dimension of production excludes direct marketing in a region, and with that, it limits the
social network potentials. This type of agri-culture does not communicate with a region,
because its products are unable to play this role; instead, it creates a monotone landscape
whose message is: “stay out”. As such, production does not “produce” social relations or a
local culture. Many successful conventional farmers take over more fields from the
neighbors; essentially, the farmer is “buying out” his community. The agricultural related
social network is mainly limited to the industrial partners. 10 As players in the global
network, the relation with the farmers is that of a business relation.
In summary, the social practices of non-organic agriculture are often and specifically in this
described case, dominated by the materiality of industrial and industrialized inputs,
embodied and habitualized in concrete farming practices as well in the structure of the
farming landscape. These practices became routines and serve as unquestioned orientation
for practicing corn-soybean agriculture, also confirmed by the dominating (agro-industrial)
media. While the production risks are in principle assumed by the farmer, significant public
subsidies to maintain industrial farming help offset these risks. Practicing the same
agriculture, the farming practices of the farmer are accepted by their neighbors. Daily
information by Internet and glossy brochures by industry guide the practices. Preparing the
10 From Schatzki (2010, 128), the site is not a geographical but a social dimension, …” pertaining to
human coexistence, …” the hanging together of social life's”.