Reconsidering the “Nature” of Agriculture: Racial Capitalism, H-2A Labor, and Political Ecologies of Extreme Heat in Georgia

Abstract

This article synthesizes literatures on political ecology and racial capitalism to interrogate the historical development and contemporary conditions of extreme heat and farm labor in Georgia. Challenging the extent to which agriculture is considered “naturally” exceptional as an industry, I argue that ecological volatility has been discursively deployed to justify Georgia’s racialized, devalued agricultural labor regime. Drawing on Du Bois’s concept of “the shadow,” I link early settler anxieties about extreme heat, violent nature, and the ideal settler-subject to current demands for immigrant farm labor through the H-2A temporary agricultural guestworker program. Although the exceptional “nature” of agriculture is overstated, the biophysical realities of extreme heat pose embodied risks for farmworkers who are treated as disposable in a constructed labor system dependent on exposure and vulnerability.