Sponsored
Welcome to Soylandia - (Cornell Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment) by Andrew Ofstehage
About this item
Highlights
- Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world.
- About the Author: Andrew Ofstehage is Program Coordinator of the Global Academy at North Carolina State University.
- 234 Pages
- Social Science, Anthropology
- Series Name: Cornell Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment
Description
About the Book
"Welcome to Soylandia is an empirically rich ethnography of the movement of US farmers to the expanding soybean frontier in the Brazilian Cerrado. It charts their encounters with landscapes, soils, crops, people, and markets in Brazil."--Book Synopsis
Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world. Seeking adventure and profit, the transplanted farmers created what Andrew Ofstehage calls "flexible farms" that have severed connections with the basic units of agriculture: land, plants, and labor. But while the transnational farmers have destroyed these relationships, they cannot simply do as they please. Regardless of their nationality, race, and capital, they must contend with pests, workers, the Brazilian state, and the land itself.
Welcome to Soylandia explores the frictions that define the new relationships of flexible farming--a paradigm that Ofstehage shows is ready to be reproduced elsewhere in Brazil and exported to the rest of the globe, including the United States. Through this compelling ethnography, Ofstehage takes readers on a tour of Soylandia and the new world of industrial agriculture, globalized markets, international development, and environmental change that it heralds.
About the Author
Andrew Ofstehage is Program Coordinator of the Global Academy at North Carolina State University.