Agency and Relationships in Engineered Agricultural Ecologies

Naturalness has long been a slippery concept for both agricultural and environmental ethics. The onset of the Anthropocene, where nothing on earth remains free from human influence, complicates things at an environmental level. The advent of gene editing in agriculture is making things worse. Genetic manipulation that does not cross species lines is touted as a creating a ‘more natural’ GMO. Naturalness is becoming harder and harder to understand. Attention to agency and relationships may provide a helpful alternative for assessing the desirability of engineered agricultural ecologies. Agency is dispersed throughout agriculture from human to microbial communities. The need to maintain diverse and intact relationships between different agents in agricultural ecologies shows promise as a normative guide. The lens of agency and relationships has the potential to find wide support. It invokes parallels with care approaches to ethics and with indigenous relationships to plants and landscapes. It also echoes aspects of multispecies studies, as well as resonating with ideals in permaculture and organic farming.