More-than-human urban food growing imaginaries: engaging with the senses

This paper catalyses the academic urgency to understand agri-food system transformation pathways. Such transformation requires new food growing imaginaries of rooted in a change of thinking and ways of engaging with more-than-human perspectives. Urban spaces are hubs of human and more-than-human interactions, and urban organic farming offers an excellent site for exploring such new food growing imaginaries. The research presented here innovates theoretical and methodological knowledge in more-than-human geography. It develops alternative food growing imaginaries through a sensory ethnography at an urban organic workers’ cooperative Organiclea and visual arts methodologies. Through that, the paper brings to the fore the marginalized more-than-human perspectives by exploring more-than-human sensory Umwelts–taste and nutrition for the soil, sound for soil denizens, smell for honeybees, tactile perception for common weeds–and understanding human experience of food growing through sight. Attuning to a more-than-human sensorium broadens our knowledge of the life stories of other biotic and abiotic critters and recognizes that human and more-than-human world-making projects are interconnected. The paper concludes that sensory engagement is critical to the development of new imaginaries for a more sustainable food production.