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Paper short abstract

In this paper, I draw on the idea of ‘more-than-human negotiation’ to research the possibility of building more responsive and adaptive human-microbial relationships. For this, I follow agricultural practices in Finland where the use of antimicrobial synthetic chemicals is limited or fully rejected.

Paper long abstract

Humans have established meaningful and varied relationships with microbes since the beginning of our existence. Since the development of the Germ Theory, we have adopted a Pasteurian ‘war-like’ perspective, based on control and eradication. However, this confrontational view of microbes faces unintended blowback in the shape of AMR, loss of soil fertility, vulnerability to epidemics, etc. The response has been a “probiotic turn” (Lorimer 2020), increasingly recognising the importance of microbial life for (more-than-)human survival. Although this represents a necessary departure from ‘war’ logics, an overly enthusiastic embracement of human-microbial mutualisms risks obscuring still-ongoing tensions, such as the uncertainty within human-microbial interactions or the role of socioeconomical contexts.

In this paper, I research how we could build more responsive and adaptive human-microbial relationships by following agricultural practices where the use of antimicrobial synthetic chemicals is limited or fully rejected. For this, I use the concept of ‘more-than-human negotiation’ (Palanco Lopez et al. 2025) to analyse the role of farmers within the farm ecosystems. Drawing on my fieldwork in eight Finnish farms during 2023-2025, I identify the specifics, affordances, and challenges that come with the idea of farming (with) microbes, exploring the potential of looking them through the lens of ‘microbial negotiation’. More specifically, I ask: what kind of human-microbial relationships are developed when farmers decide to put down the antimicrobial weapons – but still aim to achieve targets of profit and good enough yields? And what kind of material, ecological, and socioeconomical context facilitates or limits these relationships?