Soil Care in Market Gardening

During my master's International Development Studies at Wageningen University, I've grown an interest in farmers who, despite numerous and divergent lock-in mechanisms of the current agri-food system, take a regenerative approach to growing food. Through community-supported small-scale market gardening they offer potential solutions to many of today’s major challenges (while simultaneously make a decent living). In this PhD project I describe gardening practices that aim to regenerate soil health. In their novel engagements with soil various affective soil relations emerge. My ethnographic work looks at practical challenges around everyday soil care. I will look at the empirical material through a processual-relational approaches. I aim to write parts of the thesis as creative non-fiction to engage readers affectively in the soil-centred stories. Soil care is only possible through the support of a wider web of relations beyond the farm. How do societal actors start to care about something that is largely invisible, such as climate change or in my case soil? Insights into the emergent affective farmer-soil relations add to our understanding of the dynamics of mindset shifts for transformative change. I work together with the GEOS project. If you have any questions or comments feel free to send me an email at [email protected]