Wet Knees and Cuckoo Holes: On the Materiality of Knowledge in the Dutch Dairy Sector

In this paper I use an example from my ethnographic fieldwork on the the Dutch dairy sector to challenge some troubling claims made by those attempting to historicize contemporary capitalism. Or, to put it another way, what can livestock agriculture tell us about post-Fordist forms of capitalism that increasingly rely on information, data, affect, etc., to reproduce themselves and produce value? In Cognitive Capitalism, the French economist, Yann Moulier-Boutang writes that knowledge rather than labor power is increasingly becoming the source of value within global capitalism. I do not take issue with this diagnosis, however, I would like to problematize the assumption that “knowledge-goods” and “information goods” have what Moulier-Boutang calls an “immaterial nature” (2004). In General Intellects, Mackenzie Wark, an Australian cultural critic, reminds us to “hang on to the materiality of information-based sciences and technologies” (2017). In my research I bring the materiality of the body (both human and non-human) into an analysis of knowledge based value extraction in an increasingly digitized dairy sector. Specifically, I examine the “caring labor” (Hardt 1999) of bodily and/or haptic practices taught to veterinarians, feed advisors, and other agricultural professionals by a Dutch dairy consultant. These practices cultivate knowledge and information about animal wellbeing and health in order to increase efficiency, milk production, and farm income and profit. Thus, we see profit, knowledge, information, and bodies (both human and cattle) entangled within the agricultural production process.