Agriculture, the small-scale and industrial production of crops, is at the centre of rising concerns about the confluence of environmental and health problems. The overuse of agro-chemicals including insecticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers threatens the health of workers, ecosystems, and consumers. Declining availability of nutrient rich food as well the exposure to persistent pesticides has been shown to be linked to an increase in NCDs, such as cancers and diabetes.
Farming communities are at the frontlines of transformations in globalizing markets, travelling agro-technologies, and increasingly contested knowledge claims about crop production. In struggling to maintain viable and healthy crop production, communities need to navigate between customary knowledge and practice, the technologies and principles of agricultural sciences, as well as new emerging activist models and practices of agro-ecology and food sovereignty.
Human health is also closely tied to the health of non-humans on the farm. Changing climates affect the more-than-human health of plants, animals and of microbial life in the soil. A healthy soil microbiome is a central component of recent discussion about “planetary health”. Healthy soils produce nutritious food, provide the basis of healthy ecosystems, and store atmospheric carbon. In planetary health, concerns about health and environment intersect for instance in heat waves, droughts, floods and other climate events that affect human health by damaging the environment. Farming communities are also in forefront of experiments, practices of care and innovations that aim at restoring health by “healing” agrarian environments.
In this thematic cluster, we seek PhD projects that investigate problems of environmental and human health in agriculture. This includes the study of situated (cultural, gendered) understandings of the relationship between plant health, soil health, and human health on farms. We seek anthropological studies of crop farming (communities) in the face of challenges that intersect ecology, economy, and health.
Potential topics for the thematic cluster on crop production and soil pollution are:
- How do farming communities respond to rising concerns about and toxicity and other harms to people, plants and animals through modern technologies?
- How do farmers and workers understand the relation between health and the environment? How do they draw on science, traditional knowledge and agro-ecology?
- How do farmers, experts and scientists conceptualise “healing” of humans, plant, animals and soils?
- How are agroecological alternatives promoted, adapted and resisted by markets, regulators and scientific experts?
- How are struggles for the environment and health related to political demands concerning land access, identity and economic distribution.
- How are struggle for healthy soil linked to struggle for land?
If you want to discuss this topic, please get in touch with: Daniel.munster@medisin.uio.no