Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in rural Poland, I argue that there is a way to integrate ethnography, biosemiotics, and ontologies by looking at the ways multiple paradigms and views of soil and crop coexist and how they are applied and invoked in different situations.

Paper long abstract:

After the so-called Green Revolution, land erosion and land exhaustion have become a problem in rural areas where intensive cultivation has continued for a long time. In response, alternative ways of cultivating are explored. From the viewpoint of farmers, however, these are often reduced to calculations of nutrients, prices, and profits. For ethnographers of agriculture, this situation may look like an impasse because they are left with interpretations around agricultural economics, global trade policies, and neglect of rural areas in neoliberal regimes of rural politics.

In this paper, I try to overcome the native's point of view in rural ethnography and suggest that biosemiotics has much to offer for future approaches to a more environmentally oriented ethnography of agriculture. Until now, biosemiotics has mostly been neglected in rural ethnographies, and biosemiotics itself has focused more on cutting-edge biological advances. However, based on my fieldwork in rural Poland, I argue that there is a way to integrate these approaches by looking at the myriad of choices farmers face every season. Polish farmers now know the limitations of the chemical paradigm of soil nutrients and have started to take account of the role of microbes in the soil. I will describe how several ways of viewing and treating the soil coexist and how they are applied and invoked in different situations on farms. Using the concept of "thought styles," I explore the ways alternative knowledge is learned, evaluated, and accepted, and how popular notions of soil change through this process.