The real subsumption of nature and cryopolitics: Temporal fixes in dairy farming in Southern Italy

Abstract

Water buffaloes have a seasonal cycle of reproduction. Normally they tend to reproduce more when the daylight hours decrease. This seasonal reproduction also means that most of the buffalo calves would be born in autumn and winter in Italy where buffaloes are dairy animals, and milk production would be the highest in these seasons. However, consumer demand for the PDO (Protected designation of origin) mozzarella cheese is the highest in spring and summer. In order to deal with the imbalances between the seasonality of milk production and mozzarella consumption, and the strict regulations of the PDO cheese production, farmers and veterinarians resort to a temporal fix, and they regularly deseasonalise buffalo reproduction. However, there is an obvious discrepancy between the use of this and other fixes (cryotechnologies) generally associated with industrial agriculture, and the idea of traditional and sustainable food production. By engaging with relevant economic geography and political ecology literature, this paper investigates the temporal fixes in dairy farming and agri-food production through an in-depth empirical analysis of deseasonalisation, as a particular form of the real subsumption of nature, and cryopolitics in buffalo mozzarella cheese production in Southern Italy. The work presented in this article is based on multi-sited qualitative field research of buffalo farming and mozzarella cheese production in Campania region. This paper also has wider implications on how socio-ecological fixes shape ‘just-in-time’ animal agriculture and agri-food production.