Winter 2020 Course | Bioindustrialization in Agriculture

With growing pressures on land uses and other scarce resources, along with abiding fears of having too many mouths to feed, some environmentalists are arguing that solutions are to be found in the (further) intensification of food production.  And so we’re seeing increased investment in and modest public support for technologies in fish farming, biofortification, cellular meat production, and even the use of plants and animals to produce non-food products. Many rest on the presumption that life is plentiful while mineral resources are not. But the industrialization of agriculture has been going on for a long time, part and parcel of capitalist exigencies even if often justified by needing to “feed the world.”  Such industrialization has not only involved the organization of land and labor to enhance agricultural productivity, but also efforts in plant and animal breeding to make plants and animals grow faster, bigger, or otherwise in keeping with other farm organization and technologies. Using a capacious definition, this course will take a deep dive into the bioindustrialization of agriculture in its myriad forms, past and present, interrogating both its promises and perils as well as the ethics of reconfiguring life itself. We will pay special attention to the relation between the remaking of plant and animal bodies and human labor.