A matter of Accessibility

By master students Marie Dvorzak, Amalia Shem Tov, Gudrun Havsteen-Mikkelsen, and Julia Urreaga Aizarna
Nowadays, the main agriculture system is based on monocultures. The Green Revolution set the bases of the technological investments needed for this system to proliferate. Nevertheless, the complexity of the system also requires the investment in not-so-visible aspects. Modern cultivation methods to increase crop production and rates have been materialised in genetically modified seeds that go hand in hand with the chemicals that potentiate or rather protect the designed seed.
Far from this link happening exclusively on a metabolic level, it also encompasses political and economic layers. The same companies that produce GMOs produce and provide toxic chemicals that are banned in the European Union, but are exported, for instance, to other countries in South America. Once the chemicals have changed soya’s metabolism, it is imported back to the North, and used to feed cattle and then proceed to human food, in an infinity of shapes. Creating a loop where the metabolism of different beings is altered.
Concerns about the accessibility to techniques, metabolic effects or the later condition of the body as a corporate territory, are left with no chance of being addressed. With the UN Sustainable Goal 2, we requested access what has been rendered invisible. As a question, to discover, why inaccessibility is perpetuated.
The urgency to communicate the interconnection between modern agriculture methods, the policy of use, soil condition, and the effect on all living bodies is showcased through the relationship between a living soya plant and GMO technology. By singling out one unit of monoculture agriculture method, we translated our research on the narrative, and the invisible trajectories of pesticides.
This project is a part of the collaboration between the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), MANN and Nethwork, which took place from March to June 2021. Provided with a substantive briefing and exchange, students have made the dilemmas and developments of the Sustainability Development Goal no. 2: Zero Hunger visible in a unique and critical way. This was done by offering different angles and perspectives: from the economic system of subsidies and complex production chains, to issues related to scale or possible social or landscape consequences, the possibilities and impossibilities of technology, making new overviews of food products or handbooks, bringing consumer awareness on food, waste or obesity, and sketching future products and scenarios.