My research, funded by awards from Fulbright IIE and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, focuses on two groups of transnational soy farmers in Brazil: Holdeman Mennonites from throughout the United States and young farmers from the U.S. Midwest. The former group migrated to find religious and social autonomy as well as cheap farmland, the latter group to find a means to continue family farming traditions and capitalize on an economic opportunity. My dissertation project used career history interviews, other semi-structured interviews, participant observation of business and farming practices, and analysis of soil and infrastructural data to understand everyday practices and everyday ethics of large-scale landowners in the 'soy boom.' The cultural, ethical, and ecological aspects of this transnational agrarian model suggest that North American farmers are neither reproducing their own farming worlds, nor adopting the Brazilian model wholesale. Their work and values are emerging in relation with land, people, and infrastructure in Brazil as well their own sets of knowledge and skill. The soy boom is often represented as a homogeneous set of practices, values, and materials. This research demonstrates the differences that exist within this socio-ecological space as well as the interplay of land, people, capital, and infrastructure in creating emerging realities of soy production in Brazil.

My earlier work involved origin myths of quinoa, middlewomen in the hinterlands of the Southern Altiplano of Bolivia, and quinueros badly wanted northern consumers to understand the significance of their soil, work, and life. I arrived in Bolivia to ask why quinoa farmers sold to middlemen instead of cooperatives, but found a much more complicated ecology of markets that involved cooperatives, denomination of origin initiatives, fair trade, middlewomen, and middlemen. These were not simply market channels, but relationships of kinship, history, trust, value, and reciprocity. Further, I found that quinoa was hardly separable from the labor and land that brought into being. This exciting turn of events led me directly to my current work in Soylandia.

While continuing my current work in Brazil and the United States around transnational farming communities, I am currently working on a new project to understand the complex social life of soy as food in the United States - this life touches on politics, race, gender, and work in fascinating ways. More to come!

I am also exploring new research around questions of the intersections of work, land, and value in agriculture, specifically through changing landscapes, workscapes, and futures of agriculture. Besides continued work with a Mennonite community in Goias and satellite communities in Tocantins and Mato Grosso, I'm exploring new research sites to explore the intersection of land access, financialization, soil fertility, and farmwork.