The material politics of slurry: Mobilisations and transformations along the waste–fertiliser continuum

Abstract

Agriculture is a major source of excess nitrogen inputs into the environment. In Germany's Weser Ems region, the extreme concentration of intensive livestock farming translates recent improvements in nitrogen regulation into a ‘slurry problem’ that makes manure disposal services increasingly vital for the beneficiaries of an agroeconomic production system based on ongoing intensification and externalisation. The paper uses ethnographic research to focus on the material politics of different sociomaterial assemblages of slurry. It shows how manure export and new technologies to materially transform slurry both facilitate a further integration of livestock farming by intermediaries such as nutrient brokers and feedstuff producers. As slurry is mobilised and transformed, the material politics of slurry hinges upon shifting material properties and ontological struggles that position slurry along a continuum between nutritious natural fertiliser and abject organic waste. While slurry export to arable regions is problematically framed as a circular economy approach, the aim to transform slurry instead of transforming the unsustainable agroeconomic structure is embodied in hopes set upon ‘full processing’ of slurry into products akin to mineral fertilisers. The disposal of excess slurry eventually depends on both material and ontological transformations. Emerging protest against central manure processing facilities shows that slurry and its odour make intensive livestock farming a material and ‘sensible’ presence that can be acted upon politically. Embodied reactions and abjections related to this material agency of slurry can potentially bridge everyday practice and structural questions of socioecological wellbeing and justice in a more-than-human world.