About Andrew

Andrew Ofstehage is currently a program coordinator for CALS International Programs at NC State University. He completed his PhD in Anthropology in 2018 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he defended his dissertation, "'When We Came There Was Nothing': Land, Work, and Value among Transnational Soybean Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado." 

His research among transnational soybean farmers in Brazil incorporates training in agronomy and anthropology and asks how transnational farmers engage with soils and landscapes in Brazil; become managers of workers and investors; and create and re-create agrarian communities out of place. He is now conducting new research on the bio-cultural life of soy consumption in the United States, planning new work on the socio-material life of soil, and continuing ethnographic research with transnational soy farmers in Brazil. 

His forthcoming book "Welcome to Soylandia!" addresses how American farmers encounter ecologies, communities, and infrastructures of soy production in Brazil; how business and farming practices of Brazil are becoming farming models for the rest of the world, and welcomes the reader to the on-the-ground realities of the soy boom through vivid ethnographic storytelling. 

You can follow him at @AndresDeLipez