What do cows eat? Grass! Or do they? The contemporary lives of industrial dairy cows call into question this long-held connection between cows and grasslands. Many cows never set foot on pasture. Instead they live in confinement and eat a Total Mixed Ration (TMR), a mixture that includes fermented grains, hay, and industrial byproducts. This shift in diet exemplifies the deep reorganization of cow bodies and landscapes that shape dairy regions. In Wisconsin, where I conducted my dissertation fieldwork, Euro-American settler-farmers turned to dairy after massive failures of wheat in the late 1800s. Yet the all-purpose ‘milch cow’ already living on diversified homesteads was not amenable to industrialization. Dairy boosters and researchers embarked on efforts to create a robust dairy industry through the application of scientific principles to cow bodies alongside infrastructural and technological changes on farms. Today, dairy cows in Wisconsin produce unprecedented amounts of milk per cow. The practices and technologies that undergird the making of these “Supercows” show how domestication is not a process that happened in the past, but instead one that is ongoing and newly realized through biotechnologies that reshape bovine life processes. Part and parcel to these forms of ongoing domestication are landscape transformations that parallel the changes happening in cow bodies. Drawing on Heather Swanson’s proposal that domestication is a process of disorientation from landscapes, I examine how feeding ‘improved’ dairy cows involves landscape-scale domestications in order to continually produce the region as ‘America’s Dairyland.’

All are welcome to attend, even without RSVP. However, if you would like a free sandwich, please email ceh@cas.au.dk and indicate any special dietary needs before 12pm on Friday, November 1.