ABSTRACT
New Zealand has an economy that depends heavily on the export of agricultural products and it has thus adopted intensive modes of production which now face ecological limits. Dairy farming in particular contributes to a nonpoint source pollution of freshwater by nitrates and pathogens originating mainly from animal excreta and fertilizers. The degradation of water quality has become a “wicked problem” around which revolves an array of different actors that possess specific perspectives on the issue. This chapter gives some insights into the social construction of the water quality problem and its problematization by the actors in New Zealand. Using an assemblage thinking framework, the authors deconstruct the water pollution problem and show how a campaign abruptly brought the worlds of farming and the environment together, creating a new ontology, namely “dirty dairying”. Ultimately, the chapter provides an illustration of the responses to the water pollution issue which entail specific and governable schematizations of the problem.
