Deleuze and Guattari's
famous celebration of the rhizome, after borrowing the concept from
science, has made the studies and intellectual
projects conducted by Nepali farmers and agriculture-related
groups more scientific/science-centric: in Nepal we
have much scientific research into chemical pesticides, the mechanics of
irrigation techniques etc. In post-rhizome thinking however, there
is the need for farmers to understand a crucial logical inversion
regarding their work-environment: the farmers need to understand
that the soil on which they plant their crop is not the nourishing
element to that crop, rather, the soil is nothing but the
fragmentation of the roots of the crops they plant; the soil is the
remnants of the death of the crops they plant and have planted.
With this post-rhizome
logic, the Nepali farmer may be able to position the crop's root as origin of
soil, and present the landowner with the argument that it is the
farmer's crop, and the farmer's toil that crop represents, which
composes and creates arable soil. This logic will make the landowner
face the fact that his soil is dependent on the crops planted on
it, that the value of his land depends on the fragmentation of the roots
of the farmer's crop.
Thus the farmers' groups
can engage in studying the history of the soil of their arable lands,
in order to then evaluate whether that soil has been enriched and
nourished ever since planting by farmers began on it. They need to
see whether the introduction of human planting on the soil had made
the soil even more receptive for plantings in the future, and whether human planting caused the increase of the monetary value of the soil over time. These are not
properly technical-or-scientific studies, but rather historical
studies of the soil on which farmers plant, with an inclusion of
scientific-agricultural methods of soil investigation inside a farmer's social change agenda.
