Abstract
This thesis advances a care-full material-semiotic approach to respond to the challenges we face with growing food on our increasingly degraded and populated planet. The thesis moves beyond simplistic apolitical and technocratic solutions, typified by calls to ‘produce more with less’, which fail to get to the crux of many food and farming issues. I argue that vegetable farming, and food networks more generally, are made through the labour, care and concern of collectives of humans and earth-kin, that they are places where humans and earth-kin make their lives together. Using a feminist material-semiotic care lens, the thesis brings attention to the politics of who labours, whose concerns are acted on, and who is cared for by whom in commercial vegetable farming.This thesis draws on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork work which included over 135 hours of participant and non-participant observation and interviews with 21 human farmers on two vegetable farms in Victoria, Australia. The two farms contrasted in method, size, labour force and the markets they sold into. As such, the farms and farmers provided interesting contrasts on how diverse agencies come together to make farm habitats.
Four key findings were elucidated from investigating commercial vegetable farming with a material-semiotic care lens. First, vegetable farming can be understood in multiple ways, including seeing farming as a human-centred profit-driven enterprise, and as making habitat for humans and earth-kin. Second, humans and earth-kin work together to care for vegetables; they are intra-actively entangled, which means that humans and earth-kin are not distinct in their caring roles, but they are made carers together (or not) in the work they do. Third, touch is central to making and shaping farms, and building connections and care among humans and earth-kin. Fourth, attending to how farming is understood, as well as the feelings and values that are brought to and made through farming, is important for understanding how everyday needs and care are negotiated in vegetable farming.
This thesis illuminates the care work that is integral to growing food for human consumption and the role of earth-kin in vegetable farming. It foregrounds the negotiation of care involved in growing vegetables and reveals how vegetable farming supports human and earth-kin livelihoods. These considerations shift our perspective from seeing farming as an anthropocentric endeavour where only human lives and needs are considered, to seeing farming as a performative and entangled endeavour where human and earth-kin lives and well-being are at stake. Ultimately, this perspective is critical for forging pathways towards food networks and farming that respond equitably to the needs of humans and the kin we share this planet with.
| Date of Award | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Katharine MCKINNON (Supervisor) & Ann HILL (Supervisor) |