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Paper short abstract:

This article explores how cattle farming practices are rethought in light of ecological concerns. Based on ethnographic research with agroecological farmers and researchers in the field of cattle genetics and breeding, it analyzes practices following aspirations for new metabolic relations.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last few years, there has been a large debate in the Netherlands regarding the concerns about the state of the ecology and biodiversity on how to reduce emissions, especially nitrogen, from agricultural land. While most farmers want to continue their intensive farming practices, some farmers are, on the fringes of the agricultural industry, attempting to shift to a more sustainable, circular, and ecological way of farming. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands with agroecological cattle farmers and with researchers in the field of genetics and breeding, this paper investigates the actors’ attempts to rethink the food system of the future. It explores the way these alternative ways of farming strive for other infrastructures and metabolic relations between the land and the animals (eg. getting rid of pesticides, fertilizers, concentrated feed, and antibiotics) and the search for animals that are attuned to these farming practices, especially though choosing ‘double purpose’ breeds. Knowledge about the environmental effects still is lacking though, and thus farmers and researchers are experimenting with how to take care of the land and the animals. Furthermore, they are experimenting with novel economic models for farming. Next to exploring these experimental practices, this paper also analyzes varying ways in which these actors aim to include ‘nature’ or ‘biodiversity’ in farming practices and how they see the future of cows within these systems, while still operating within the dominant infrastructure of intensive livestock farming.