Raw Earth Agriculture: Supply Chain Criticism and the Political Cartographies of Food

This project aims to bring researchers, designers, architects, and humanities scholars together – in the form of a workshop – to map the emerging cartographies of exploitation, extraction, and trade promised by the recent EU Critical Raw Materials Act, 2023.

By 2050, the European Union (EU) will demand more than ninety times more rare earth elements for digital technologies and renewable energy infrastructure than today. However, nearly all those materials will be mined outside of the EU in contested territories. Until now, the Chinese mining sector has been the main supplier.

The EU wants to reduce European dependence on the import of rare earths and critical raw minerals. It aims at fast-tracking the growth and exploitation of new mining sites in Europe and its international map of influence. By doing so, the EU instead moves away from the logic of extraction intrinsic to the climate emergency. A new cartography of colonial extraction already marks the “energy transition,” on which the future of Europe’s political power depends.

This projects focuses creative and critical attention on the agricultural corridor linking North Africa to Spain and The Netherlands. The project will result in a two-day workshop in 2025 that will involve scholars, artists, and activists from across the agricultural nexus.

Workshop

Workshop participants will explore how water, labor, and phosphorus (a key chemical for farming) are all connected. What role do these ecologies play in our economy, and how does capitalism rely on them? The participants will also try to understand where things go wrong and where people can work together in dealing with these important resources.

The workshop consists of film screenings, talks, a mixed media installation at Framer Framed, and a field trip to the agribulk terminal of the Port of Amsterdam. Students at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA) Field Theory course are invited as participants and interlocutors, and the program is open to all members of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), as well as the wider public. 

Runtime: March 2024-March 2025
Partners: Jeff Diamanti, Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities (Cultural Analysis & Philosophy) at the UvA