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Paper short abstract

Soil data in its myriad forms are not points of perception but constitutive of multiple ontologies of soil. Ontological survival turns on the capacity of data to shape agricultural practices, and their ability to endure across different temporalities within networks of care.

Paper long abstract

Increasingly soils are enacted as living systems in need of care. Multiple soil ontologies are performed in labs, operationalised by machinery, researched through participatory projects and experienced through attentive noticing of soil’s liveliness. Soil data in its myriad forms are not points of perception but constitutive of these different ontologies.

We asked 14 farmers what they care for, what they know of the soil and what they want to find out – an invitation to clash ontologies together and see what survives.

Alongside lab tests and models, we walked fields, dug samples and talked about care practice. During codesign, farmers were interested in carbon and fungal-bacterial ratios. In fields farmers described soil in terms of cattle health, “the cow is the soil”, soil moisture as “the bounce” underfoot, and paper mulch making “the field sad.”

The ways we sustain those we care for, and betray others we neglect, give meaning to agents and objects within multi-dimensional networks of care. The temporalities over which the actions and emotions of our relatings play out reveal the resilience of quantitative data when codesigning research and its ephemerality in fields, giving way to immediate obligations experienced through farm work.

Across this boundary, objects within networks change. Cattle and crops switch from units of productivity to mediators of microbial health. Previously invisible agents like earthworms emerge as integral to the system. Ontological survival turns on the capacity of data to shape agricultural practices, and their ability to endure across different temporalities within networks of care.