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Short abstract:

Organic manure is part of a soil repair assemblage. Based on fieldwork in the Moroccan Souss, the paper explores the social life of manure from its origin in agro-forestry to its use in industrial cash crop production and the concomitant transformations of multispecies relationalities.

Long abstract:

Organic manure is part of a soil repair assemblage. It is a coproduction of plants, animals, humans, worms, insects, microbes, and others and is applied to enrich the soil for plant life. Such assemblage involves the maintenance and design of soil structure such as terraces, the regulation of rain with drainage systems, irrigation technology, active protection against erosion and much more. It demands multispecies cooperation with active human involvement and reacts sensitive to environmental challenges. In the Moroccan Souss, however, it has become an integral part of cash crop supply chain infrastructures. This region has been designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve on account of its worldwide unique argan forest ecosystem. At the same time, it is also a ‘Garden of Europe’, i.e. the site of high-standard agrobusiness. Manure constitutes one of the links connecting these worlds. It integrates small-scale conventional agro-forestry into highly technicized cash crop agribusiness thereby transforming it. Beyond its importance for a sophisticated conventional system of agroforestry, it proves also indispensable for the fertilization of irrigated land in high-end modern cash crop production where chemical fertilizers cannot replace it successfully. However, this demand for manure has significantly contributed to the demise of small-scale agriculture and the exploitation of a protected forest ecosystem for a capitalist agroindustrial infrastructure.