Tidy Fields and Clean Shirts: A Comparative Ethnography of Good Farming in South Dakota and Luis Eduardo Magalhães

Abstract

North American farmers manage massive soy farms in the Brazilian Cerrado from the clean offices off the dusty streets of Luis Eduardo Magalhães, Brazil. As they delegate field work to farmworkers, they focus on paperwork, managing investment capital, and satisfying the investors that control that capital. This comparative ethnographic article considers the agrarian values and farm life of the author's childhood on a small South Dakota farm alongside the experience of transnational soybean farmers in Brazil to understand the perception of good farming in two different contexts. This imaginary of the good farmer tells us about what behaviors are rewarded within farming communities and how farming behaviors become idealized. While “good farming” in 1980s South Dakota was measured by straight rows, high crop yields, and weed‐free fields, good farming for transnational farmers is measured by efficiency, profit, and clean shirts. Transnational farmers center the farmer, not the field, as the site of aestheticizing as they disassociate from crops, work, and even land.

Farmer Lifeways and the Lived Experience of Adaptation to Water Policy Change in Idaho's Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Region

“…Financial precarity is not new for farmers; indeed, this stress (among others) has led to significant mental health outcomes for farmers (Bryant and Garnham 2014; den Besten, Pande, and Savenije 2016; Wutich, Brewis, and Tsai 2020). Yet, pride in the farming lifeway encourages persistence in spite of the challenges (Murphy et al 2017; Ofstahage 2022; Wyborn et al 2015).…”

“…As a livelihood and an identity (i.e., a lifeway), farming is often framed around a collective perspective of cultural connection to land, natural processes and stewardship, and past generations (Arbuckle and Kast 2012; Groth and Curtis 2017; McGuire, Morton, and Cast 2013; Ofstahage 2022; Stock 2007; Thompson, Reimer, and Prokopy 2015). Historically, farming communities have been accustomed to facing uncertainty and changing conditions that require year‐to‐year adjustments in decision‐making (Sheridan 2007; Wyborn et al 2015); this has been amplified by globalization, fluctuating markets (Arbuckle and Kast 2012), and changes in climate (Gardezi and Arbuckle 2019; Yung et al 2015).…”