Lead by Daniel Münster, with 2 PhDs, Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, Marianne E. Lien, Ursula Münster, and visiting fellows Anna Krzywoszynska & Eben Kirksey.
This WP undertakes in-depth empirical case studies of practitioners and communities revitalizing agrarian soils affected by extractive agriculture in Norway, India, and beyond. We study practices of healing soils in world regions that share the challenge of declining soil health but differ in the degree of market and state involvement in agriculture. Based on ethnographic field research, discourse analysis, and participant observation among practitioners of alternative agriculture.
Aim
This work package aims to rethink soil health beyond productivity. We aim to study and analyze soil healing practices at sites of compromised soil health India, Norway, and beyond. We will analyze practices, techniques, spoken and written discourses on microbes, metabolism, and more-than-human health in alternative agriculture. We seek insight into the potentials as well as the obstacles and resistances to microbial and metabolic thinking and more-than-human health in agrarian practices and how these are linked to place, history, economy, and local politics.
Questions
We take questions regarding soil degradation as a starting point to ask about ways to conceptualize and act upon planetary health – from the ground up. How can soil help us conceptualize health from an ecological, more-than-human, perspective? What practices and technologies are farmers, gardeners and activists developing in order to repair agricultural soils? How do they know, test and assess the condition and health of soils? What conceptions of more-than-human health are emerging in practices of bioremediation in agriculture? What are the resistances and obstacles to microbial thinking and practices in agriculture?
Methods
Through multi-sited and multi-species ethnography, we follow microbial healing technologies to sites of innovation and practice. We focus on fermentation, bioinoculants, and plant/fungi-based technologies in alternative agriculture movements as part of microbial “bioremediation”.