Presentation short abstract

This talk gives an agricultural perspective on more-than-human approaches and degrowth and is proposing that animals would be part of a care-revolution. It will give hard facts on agricultural growth and how the paradigm of growth influenced agricultural Sciences. I invites participants to envision.

Presentation long abstract

In agriculture, the prevailing paradigm is “grow or die.” Farms are expected to expand—with more land, more animals, and more technology—or face decline and disappearance. This slogan reflects not only agricultural practice but also the capitalist logic embedded in agricultural science, where economic growth forms the foundation of the discipline.

Growth, however, is not only economic. As Cary E. Bennett et al. (2018) have shown, domesticated chickens have at least doubled in body size since the late medieval period, and their body mass has increased up to fivefold since the mid-twentieth century. These chickens can no longer survive independently; they rely on continuous human, technical, and pharmaceutical support. Their disproportionately enlarged breast muscles—bred to meet human dietary preferences—often prevent them from standing upright.

From this perspective, it is easy to conclude that animals would vote for degrowth. But what if we not only counteract the destructive, extractivist notions of growth, but established an entirely new paradigm? What if care became our guiding principle—in agriculture, in human–nature relations, and in life more broadly? What forms of investment, agency, or activist practices might animals embody within the care-revolution? What can we learn?

I will not answering this questions, but perhaps we can begin together—human and more-than-human participants on this panel—to envision a world in which human life is no longer defined by overbred broiler bones. Let us imagine a future in which the geological traces we, humans and more-than-humans, leave behind signal radical solidarity and care—markers of a –cene not yet named.