Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

Sippel, Sarah Ruth; Виссер, Оане

doi:10.1007/s10460-020-10152-3

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 94 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition, it examines what contributes to the resilience of farmland imaginaries in the face of opposing evidence. More broadly, in line with Sippel and Visser (2020) it argues that in examining resource making projects and resource frontiers, it is imperative to pay attention to the (often overlooked) issues of representation and knowledge making (and obscuring), particularly as expressed in farmland imaginaries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Persistent farmland imaginaries: celebration of fertile soil and the recurrent ignorance of climate

Виссер

2020

Agric Hum Values

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article looks at how imaginaries of land and climate play a role in farmland investment discourses and practices. Foreign farmland investors in the fertile black earth region of Russia and Ukraine have ‘celebrated’ soil fertility while largely ignoring climatic factors. The article shows a centuries-long history of outsiders coming to the region lured by the fertile soils, while grossly underestimating climate which has had disastrous implications for farm viability and the environment. Comparisons with historical and contemporary literature on other regions (e.g. the US prairies and North Africa) suggest that the underestimation of climatic risks by newcomers is remarkably prevalent in resource frontiers.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Persistent farmland imaginaries: celebration of fertile soil and the recurrent ignorance of climate

Виссер

2020

Agric Hum Values

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Considering and imagining alternative diversification strategies helps elucidate what farmers would (or would not) do to change their operation’s level of diversity. In this process of imagining new landscapes, we aim to gauge how farmers envision their land and its transformative potential within current and new realities (Watkins 2015 ; Sippel and Visser 2021 ). Assessing these two dynamics in tandem—the present and the imaginary—points to the values and barriers of the current US agricultural system, contextualized within the Magic Valley, as well as potential pathways for change and transformation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Spatial imaginaries are stories and ideas about spaces and places that are both individually constructed and shared collectively (Driver 2005 ; Watkins 2015 ). Research has expanded this concept rooted in human geography to focus on agrarian realities (Wolford 2004 ), land transformation (Sippel and Visser 2021 ), and how the sociopolitical context within which our imagination befalls can limit and constrain the possibilities of climate change adaptation (Nightingale et al 2020 ). We conceptualize spatial imaginaries in this study to encompass the current values and views of agricultural landscapes (“the present”) and how they relate to (or differ from) visions of political agroecological metamorphosis (“the imaginary”).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crop diversification in Idaho’s Magic Valley: the present and the imaginary

Spangler

Burchfield

Radel

et al. 2022

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The simplification of agricultural landscapes, particularly in the United States (US), has contributed to alarming rates of environmental degradation. As such, increasing agrobiodiversity throughout the US agri-food system is a crucial goal toward mitigating these harmful impacts, and crop diversification is one short-term mechanism to begin this process. However, despite mounting evidence of its benefits, crop diversification strategies have yet to be widely adopted in the US. Thus, we explore barriers and bridges to crop diversification for current farmers, focused on the Magic Valley of southern Idaho—a region with higher crop diversity relative to the US norm. We address two main research questions: (1) how and why do farmers in this region enact temporal and/or spatial strategies to manage crop diversity (the present) and (2) what are the barriers and bridges to alternative diversification strategies (the imaginary)? Through a political agroecology and spatial imaginaries lens, we conducted and analyzed 15 farmer and 14 key informant interviews between 2019 and 2021 to gauge what farmers are doing to manage crop diversity (the present) and how they imagine alternative landscapes (the imaginary). We show that farmers in this region have established a regionally diversified landscape by relying primarily on temporal diversification strategies—crop rotations and cover cropping—but do not necessarily pair these with other spatial diversification strategies that align with an agroecological approach. Furthermore, experimenting with and imagining new landscapes is possible (and we found evidence of such), but daily challenges and structural constraints make these processes not only difficult but unlikely and even “dangerous” to dream of. Therein, we demonstrate the importance of centering who is farming and why they make certain decisions as much as how they farm to support agroecological transformation and reckoning with past and present land use paradigms to re-imagine what is possible. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00833-0.

show abstract

“…The form that Indigenous land‐based assets take is not predetermined, and there are no fixed paths through which investment will necessarily proceed. Rather, new asset forms are being invented in specific places in Northern Australia in pursuit of Indigenous economic development, where processes of assetization are guided by particular imaginaries of ‘what land is, can, and should be’ (Sippel and Visser, 2021: 271). Important features of agribusiness developments, such as their size and how they engage with Indigenous peoples, can be negotiated in a range of ways and with varied outcomes (Magnan, 2012; Sommerville and Magnan, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Financialization for Development? Asset Making on Indigenous Land in Remote Northern Australia

Langford¹,

Lawrence²,

Smith³

2021

Development and Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Indigenous Australian landowners are increasingly seeking to develop agricultural production on their lands to improve the welfare and economic opportunities of their communities. This can require substantial capital input and, in the absence of enough government funding, Indigenous groups are turning to private investors. Development literature has explored private sector-led and 'financialized' approaches to development at a macro level as something that is done to communities; however, less research has examined how remote communities themselves seek to develop their natural assets through partnerships with businesses and with global finance. This article examines the work being done to prepare land for external investment. It provides an example of emergent assetization processes being undertaken outside the financial sector, driven by social outcomes seemingly beyond the domain of shareholder value. Paradoxically, individuals engaged in these asset-making processes may oppose the withdrawal of direct funding for community development associated with a financialization of development, yet they are left with few options but to further these efforts by seeking private finance themselves -facilitating financialization for development. This interaction of structural effects and local agency complicates narratives of financialization as they are commonly presented and has important implications for Indigenous economic development in Northern Australia.

show abstract

Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

Cited by 16 publications

References 94 publications

Persistent farmland imaginaries: celebration of fertile soil and the recurrent ignorance of climate

Persistent farmland imaginaries: celebration of fertile soil and the recurrent ignorance of climate

Crop diversification in Idaho’s Magic Valley: the present and the imaginary

Financialization for Development? Asset Making on Indigenous Land in Remote Northern Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About