Short abstract:

As an international green market emerges, companies are promoting “regenerative agriculture” on a large scale by valuing soil life. Using ethnographic data from the Paris Basin, I ask how the STS framework can illuminate the impact on non-human and human labour at the farm level.

Long abstract:

In the face of environmental crises, European policies respond mainly by integrating ecosystems into the market economy. In agriculture, soil life is increasingly seen as valuable, often depending on its ability to store carbon. In Ile-de-France, companies are promoting “regenerative agriculture” experiments through public-private research partnerships. To disseminate these practices (no-tillage, cover crops, sheep grazing) on an large scale, agronomists are developing digital tools to translate farmers’ relationships with their soils into calculable, marketable data.

In line with the panel theme, I will focus on the tools created to value the earth, i.e. farmers’ complex soil biodiversity. What kinds of knowledge and criteria do they rely on? What technologies do they require? How do they change the division of labour at the farm level? Beyond the opposition between high-tech, climate-smart robots, and agro-ecological solutions, “regenerative agriculture” is expanding through technologies of valuation to enrol soil ecosystems in a global green market.