Terrestrial Management: Ecological farming in Puerto Rico

Sammanfattning: According to the 2022 IPCC report on mitigation of climate change, a transformational change is necessary in every aspect of society, industry and commerce by 2030 in order to keep global temperatures within safe limits. What would this transformation look like and how do we begin? I argue that applying Bruno Latour’s concept of the Terrestrial can help lead us towards the path of transformation. More specifically how the multispecies management of ecological farming in Puerto Rico can help us understand how to reorient management practices in what he calls The New Climatic Regime. I explore what it means to land in the critical zone and situate ourselves within what Haraway calls the Plantationocene. I situate Puerto Rico as a microcosm of the living wholeness of the Earth. I approached uncovering stories of the earthbound as a way to discover a world where colonialism, neoliberalism and racism have led to environmental degradation, food insecurity, and poverty. By placing Bruno Latour’s arguments for a new political landscape in dialogue with post-qualitative inquiry, I hope to gain insight into the world in a different way, one that acknowledges the intricate nature of the connections between the social and the ecological. Connections that cannot be unravelled into neat and easy to follow strands of cause and effect but are tangled and knotted, allowing for multiple entry points into ideas of becoming Terrestrial. I approach stories as a way of being in continuous dialogue with the self and the surrounding world. What stories do ecological farms tell us about collaborative engagement in a multi-species organisation? Not as an attempt to provide solutions or definitive answers for how organisations should orient themselves but rather as an uncovering of the possibility of exploring new ways of thinking and doing.