Social scientific scholarship on agriculture often focuses on food systems, but this panel addresses dimensions of agricultural production and practice beyond food itself. As pig bodies yield both pork and pharmaceutical materials, corn both animal feed and ethanol, and cannabis both medicine and building materials, how does the practice, governance, and commercialization of agriculture beyond food generate opportunities or challenges for emancipatory change and good relations? Well-studied food system concerns like soil and environmental degradation, violent labor practices, and the plantation logics of industrialism, might be augmented by studies that approach agriculture from non-food perspectives; submissions could address the complexities of agricultural production of medicines/pharmaceuticals, textiles, lumber, or other goods. How and in what ways do these forms of agricultural production generate specific relations with environments, social worlds, scales, industries, or practices of extraction? How can critical or ethnographic studies of agriculture shed light on linked or dependent industries such as pharma or construction? How is racial capitalism working in agriculture beyond and adjacent to food? What are the political potentials or projects surfacing in these forms of agricultural production (for example, climate and and environmental justice), and with what stakes, tactics, demands, or effects?
We invite papers that address a broad range of topics and places. They might present ethnographic work, notes from the field, or historical examinations of specific crops, farms, or industries. We anticipate convening a standard 5- or 6-person panel to meet digitally, though could expand depending on submission numbers.