ABSTRACT
This chapter provides two sorts of contextual information to help depict the active material, and discursive agency of environment in which farmers were contemplating to commit to stewarding their soil, land and land uses differently. It addresses an operational fusion of BA and dairying, an assembled approach to farming that is motivated by soil issues, and future possibilities of soil tended differently. The chapter explores the BAdairying phenomenon, by moving to the international currents of alternative and sustainable agriculture, and the long-established New Zealand (NZ) industrial-chemical (I-C dairy) scene into which an alternative model of dairying is set. It gives a glimpse of conceptual complexities and fluidity that typify different sorts of ontological tussles. The chapter concludes that momentum and enthusiasm over alternatives to the intensive model waned in the 1990s, partly reflecting the disappearance of friendly institutions, enthusiastic press coverage of the I-Cdairying model, and lack of acceptable proof of alternative agriculture claims in the NZ research community.
