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Paper short abstract

I suggest to understand practices of infiltrating water into the soil in agriculture to fight droughts and replenish aquifers as speculative labor with the landscape. I explore how this labor can be understood as more-than-human labor and how farmers engage with the indeterminacies it entails.

Paper long abstract

In various European regions, farmers are starting to counteract industrial terraforming of waterscapes, such as straightening watercourses and drainage, as well as the resulting consequences of droughts and floods. They are doing this by implementing land management practices designed to allow water to infiltrate the ground, by planting hedges, digging ditches, restoring straightened watercourses, and constructing leaky dams. In my contribution, I will draw on my ethnographic fieldwork with farmers in France and Great Britain who implement these water retention measures. I will explore how practices involving the infiltration of water into the soil, the retention of water on the surface and the prevention of runoff can be understood as a speculative labor with the landscape, bringing water into the soil and into aquifers. Drawing on theoretical work on more-than-human labor (Maan Barua) and hybrid labor (Alyssa Battistoni), I will analyze the water retention measures applied by farmers, including their care practices towards the hedges, watercourses, geological formations and soil; their practices of configuring, placing and space; and their responses to landscape conditions. I consider this labor with the landscape to be speculative because it depends on indeterminacies of ecosystems and the possible resistances in the relation between land and water. My contribution will explore how farmers engage with these indeterminacies in their daily work with water retention measures, and how speculative labor with the landscape can be grasped in relation to practices of controlling and managing the water landscape using mapping and monitoring techniques.