Andrea Rissing
Biographic Data
| ID | 93024 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrea Rissing |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrea |
| FAMILY NAME | Rissing |
| SIGNATURE | RISSING A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5523-7484 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Contexts of crop selection decisions shape changing agricultural landscape diversity in the United States
How Do We Know What We Grow? Interrogating the Datafication of Agricultural Landscapes in the United States
This article analyzes the data processes that render US agricultural landscapes knowable at scale as objects of anthropological inquiry. We focus our inquiry on the US Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), a widely used, moderate-resolution raster data set classifying national agricultural land use annually. The CDL's crop categories are based upon-but depart significantly from-those of another federal agricultural office, the Fa…
Towards a comprehensive analysis of agricultural land systems in the EU and US
Understanding agricultural land systems is paramount to preparing for future transitions under climate change. Systematic quantitative, multi-context analyses of agricultural land systems are a promising way of increasing our understanding but rely on the availability of large-scale and commensurable data. The available data, however, are outcomes of political priorities and processes and thus not neutral windows into agricultural realities. We m…
Farm households and the elusiveness of social sustainability
Childcare for farm families
Despite long-standing safety recommendations that non-working children be supervised off the worksite by an adult, little is known about farm families' ability to comply. We conducted a review of 92 documents and 36 key informant interviews in three U.S. states (Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin) to assess how farm service providers and farm organizations address the intersection of children and childcare with farm work and farm safety in programming.…
Landscapes of value
This special issue presents a collection of ethnographic and archaeological articles that consider how humans inscribe landscapes with diverse forms of value. From natural resources to real estate markets, from cherished homelands to foreign speculative investment, the way we approach landscapes offers insights into value systems as they map onto and emerge from biophysical terrains. We argue that the "landscapes of value" analytic foregrounds su…
We feed the world
Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhet…
Porkopolis
From wet markets to Wal‐Marts
The invisible labor and multidimensional impacts of negotiating childcare on farms
Social science inquiries of American agriculture have long recognized the inextricability of farm households and farm businesses. Efforts to train and support farmers, however, often privilege business realm indicators over social issues. Such framings implicitly position households as disconnected from farm stress or farm success. This article argues that systematically tracing the pathways between farm households and farm operations represents …
“Profitability” vs. “Making It
Efforts to recruit, train, and support beginning farmers often emphasize that mastering business finances is a key to farm success. Such efforts to inculcate business mentalities in new farmers are akin to farm‐level projects of economic disembedding. While many experts hold that isolating a farm's financial metrics reveals its viability, this article draws upon Polanyian economic understandings to argue that disembedding a farm's finances is fun…
Fences
When fences arrive to divide landscapes, they often serve as mechanisms of control. This ethnographic essay considers the boundaries delineating the new alternative agricultures of the Corn Belt to rethink the implications of fencing. In a context of grain monocultures, the moveable fencing of rotational grazing, the walls of high tunnels, and the buffers required around organic fields introduce edges into homogeneity. These edges prove fertile s…
Flipping the Field
Alternative economic strategies and the technology treadmill
This article describes the specialized technologies and nonmonetary economic strategies used by beginning vegetable farmers in Iowa alternative agriculture. Cochrane's model of the technology treadmill suggests that the newest wave of precision agriculture technology will soon become compulsory on large-scale grain farms in Iowa, but these are not the only technologies driving Midwestern agriculture forward. Beginning farmers in Iowa alternative …
The invisible labor and multidimensional impacts of negotiating childcare on farms
Social science inquiries of American agriculture have long recognized the inextricability of farm households and farm businesses. Efforts to train and support farmers, however, often privilege business realm indicators over social issues. Such framings implicitly position households as disconnected from farm stress or farm success. This article argues that systematically tracing the pathways between farm households and farm operations represents …
Alternative economic strategies and the technology treadmill
This article describes the specialized technologies and nonmonetary economic strategies used by beginning vegetable farmers in Iowa alternative agriculture. Cochrane's model of the technology treadmill suggests that the newest wave of precision agriculture technology will soon become compulsory on large-scale grain farms in Iowa, but these are not the only technologies driving Midwestern agriculture forward. Beginning farmers in Iowa alternative …
Landscapes of value
This special issue presents a collection of ethnographic and archaeological articles that consider how humans inscribe landscapes with diverse forms of value. From natural resources to real estate markets, from cherished homelands to foreign speculative investment, the way we approach landscapes offers insights into value systems as they map onto and emerge from biophysical terrains. We argue that the "landscapes of value" analytic foregrounds su…
We feed the world
Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhet…
How Do We Know What We Grow? Interrogating the Datafication of Agricultural Landscapes in the United States
This article analyzes the data processes that render US agricultural landscapes knowable at scale as objects of anthropological inquiry. We focus our inquiry on the US Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), a widely used, moderate-resolution raster data set classifying national agricultural land use annually. The CDL's crop categories are based upon-but depart significantly from-those of another federal agricultural office, the Fa…
Towards a comprehensive analysis of agricultural land systems in the EU and US
Understanding agricultural land systems is paramount to preparing for future transitions under climate change. Systematic quantitative, multi-context analyses of agricultural land systems are a promising way of increasing our understanding but rely on the availability of large-scale and commensurable data. The available data, however, are outcomes of political priorities and processes and thus not neutral windows into agricultural realities. We m…
Fences
When fences arrive to divide landscapes, they often serve as mechanisms of control. This ethnographic essay considers the boundaries delineating the new alternative agricultures of the Corn Belt to rethink the implications of fencing. In a context of grain monocultures, the moveable fencing of rotational grazing, the walls of high tunnels, and the buffers required around organic fields introduce edges into homogeneity. These edges prove fertile s…
Alternative economic strategies and the technology treadmill
This article describes the specialized technologies and nonmonetary economic strategies used by beginning vegetable farmers in Iowa alternative agriculture. Cochrane's model of the technology treadmill suggests that the newest wave of precision agriculture technology will soon become compulsory on large-scale grain farms in Iowa, but these are not the only technologies driving Midwestern agriculture forward. Beginning farmers in Iowa alternative …
Flipping the Field
“Profitability” vs. “Making It
Efforts to recruit, train, and support beginning farmers often emphasize that mastering business finances is a key to farm success. Such efforts to inculcate business mentalities in new farmers are akin to farm‐level projects of economic disembedding. While many experts hold that isolating a farm's financial metrics reveals its viability, this article draws upon Polanyian economic understandings to argue that disembedding a farm's finances is fun…
Fences
When fences arrive to divide landscapes, they often serve as mechanisms of control. This ethnographic essay considers the boundaries delineating the new alternative agricultures of the Corn Belt to rethink the implications of fencing. In a context of grain monocultures, the moveable fencing of rotational grazing, the walls of high tunnels, and the buffers required around organic fields introduce edges into homogeneity. These edges prove fertile s…
From wet markets to Wal‐Marts
The invisible labor and multidimensional impacts of negotiating childcare on farms
Social science inquiries of American agriculture have long recognized the inextricability of farm households and farm businesses. Efforts to train and support farmers, however, often privilege business realm indicators over social issues. Such framings implicitly position households as disconnected from farm stress or farm success. This article argues that systematically tracing the pathways between farm households and farm operations represents …
We feed the world
Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhet…
Porkopolis
Childcare for farm families
Despite long-standing safety recommendations that non-working children be supervised off the worksite by an adult, little is known about farm families' ability to comply. We conducted a review of 92 documents and 36 key informant interviews in three U.S. states (Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin) to assess how farm service providers and farm organizations address the intersection of children and childcare with farm work and farm safety in programming.…
Landscapes of value
This special issue presents a collection of ethnographic and archaeological articles that consider how humans inscribe landscapes with diverse forms of value. From natural resources to real estate markets, from cherished homelands to foreign speculative investment, the way we approach landscapes offers insights into value systems as they map onto and emerge from biophysical terrains. We argue that the "landscapes of value" analytic foregrounds su…
Farm households and the elusiveness of social sustainability
Towards a comprehensive analysis of agricultural land systems in the EU and US
Understanding agricultural land systems is paramount to preparing for future transitions under climate change. Systematic quantitative, multi-context analyses of agricultural land systems are a promising way of increasing our understanding but rely on the availability of large-scale and commensurable data. The available data, however, are outcomes of political priorities and processes and thus not neutral windows into agricultural realities. We m…
Contexts of crop selection decisions shape changing agricultural landscape diversity in the United States
How Do We Know What We Grow? Interrogating the Datafication of Agricultural Landscapes in the United States
This article analyzes the data processes that render US agricultural landscapes knowable at scale as objects of anthropological inquiry. We focus our inquiry on the US Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), a widely used, moderate-resolution raster data set classifying national agricultural land use annually. The CDL's crop categories are based upon-but depart significantly from-those of another federal agricultural office, the Fa…
Agriculture (9 works) · Organic Food and Agriculture (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Agricultural Economics and Policy (3 works) · Agricultural Innovations and Practices (3 works) · Archaeology (3 works)