Paper short abstract:

Natural farming movements in India develop novel technologies of soil recuperation. I argue that the novel techniques (ferments) and understandings of the cow-soil-microbe complex are complicated by bionativism or the mapping of multispecies belonging onto narratives of Hindu Nationalism.

Paper long abstract:

In response to agrarian crisis, small-scale farmers in India are experimenting with novel technologies of soil recuperation. This paper focuses on the so-called Zero Budget Natural Farming movement in Kerala started by its inventor and guru Subhash Palekar, a farmer from Maharashtra. This paper argues that an onto-epistemological shift happens when natural farmers learn a novel appreciation of soil as a living thing, or as Palekar puts it, as annapurna, holy mother soil. ZBNF shifts attention and practices from feeding plants and animals to maintaining the health and fertility of soil with the help of microbial agents. The microbial turn in soil care is a remarkable shift from mainstream practices in India. Soil care is rethought a fundamentally relational activity that requires humans, cows, plants and microorganism to work symbiotically for mutual benefit. A core technology of this movement is a fermented brew of cow dung, urine, sugar and pulses, the so-called nectar of life (jīvāmṛta). The movement's novel microbiopolitics (Paxson) of soil care (Puig de la Bellacasa) is implicated in what I call bionativism or the mapping of multispecies belonging onto narratives of Hindu Nationalism. Microbial soil restoration work only with native cows (Bos indus). Only Bos indicus, they claim, has the miraculous high microbial count in their dung and urine that makes it possible to cultivate 30 acres with one cow. Focusing on the cow-soil-microbe complex, I trace the entanglements of biophilic and probiotic perspectives on soil care with bio-nationalist conspiracy theories about alien plants, animals and sciences.