Tidy Fields and Clean Shirts: A Comparative Ethnography of Good Farming in South Dakota and Luis Eduardo Magalhães

Abstract

North American farmers manage massive soy farms in the Brazilian Cerrado from the clean offices off the dusty streets of Luis Eduardo Magalhães, Brazil. As they delegate field work to farmworkers, they focus on paperwork, managing investment capital, and satisfying the investors that control that capital. This comparative ethnographic article considers the agrarian values and farm life of the author's childhood on a small South Dakota farm alongside the experience of transnational soybean farmers in Brazil to understand the perception of good farming in two different contexts. This imaginary of the good farmer tells us about what behaviors are rewarded within farming communities and how farming behaviors become idealized. While “good farming” in 1980s South Dakota was measured by straight rows, high crop yields, and weed-free fields, good farming for transnational farmers is measured by efficiency, profit, and clean shirts. Transnational farmers center the farmer, not the field, as the site of aestheticizing as they disassociate from crops, work, and even land.