5. Ecological Considerations
Painter Juan Cavazos, himself a migrant farmworker recognized for his talents by a staff member of the Geneseo Migrant Center, compresses various facets of agriculture into a single canvas. A location that has been transformed into farm-land, its geometry of agrarian design, the presence of modern farm machinery, hired hands at the point of contact with soil--all of this brings a cabbage to market. Crucially there is a woman who, like us, beholds the field. Her relation to the scene however is quite ambiguous, depending upon whether she is a property owner, a visitor, a migrant advocate, or even a kind of allegorical Madonna. Even if not materially in the Cabbage Field as shown here we’re never separate, because that’s not how ecology works, and so the question becomes that of our relation to agriculture.
Consuming food can’t help but be participatory, and the way we eat owes a lot to actions that were taken centuries ago. This section of the exhibit looks at the deforestation associated with European settlement, and the soil exhaustion that occurred on the newly created farms. It shows the early pesticides, herbicides, and soil amendments attempting to maximize production--and their downstream effects. All of these concerns are anything but irrelevant to contemporary agriculture. Finally, the naturalness of farming itself is considered by way of the “migration” metaphor used to describe hired laborers, as well as foods grown in one region being consumed in another. We have attempted to center the lives and importance of hired hands; however, as throughout Needful Labor the historical record necessarily is one of inference and thus to some extent speculative. It requires imagination to see what we're told isn't there.