Cattle Crossroads

Researching Danish livestock production for the future

This project explores ways to envision and generate a new research basis for a future green livestock production in Denmark. Merging anthropology with veterinary and animal science, the aim is to identify and proactively repurpose the theoretical and practical knowledge that conditions Danish cattle production.

Through collaborative interdisciplinary fieldwork Cattle Crossroads focuses on the knowledge junctions where scientific, theoretical and practical choices are made about how to produce cattle in a green future. Exploring how knowledge about livestock production is articulated, codified, practiced, contested, funded and shared among different professionals in the field, the project will build a capacity to navigate the crossroads that animal production spurs in an era of climate change and spark a renewed debate about de-growth, as is appropriate for the Earth’s finite resource conditions.

This project is a collaboration between the Saxo Institute (Faculty of Humanities) and the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences).

Research objectives

To offer a qualitative analysis of the ways that knowledge about climate and environmentally sustainable cattle is incorporated or circumvented in the domains of livestock science, consultancy, governance, financing, research funding structures, and education.
To provide an interdisciplinary fieldwork-based analysis of how the above enable or obstruct practical ambitions to rear cattle according to a national green transition agenda, and to feed this practical knowledge back into the other knowledge domains.
To deliver a combined set of insights about the junctions – theoretical and practical – entailed in research-based Danish cattle production, thereby developing ways of discussing and practicing a down-scaled cattle production inspired by an absolute rather than relative green transition.

Advisory board

Ken Arnold, Medical Museion/Wellcome Collection

Brita Brenna, University of Oslo

Marianne Elisabeth Lien, University of Oslo

Jamie Lorimer, Oxford University

Simon Rüegg, University of Zurich

Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz

Partners

Ole Panduro, owner of Kollemosegaard, Tølløse

Annika Norman Andersen, conservation specialist, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, UCPH

Publications and outreach

Production animals: a gallery for the art of the possible
New exhibition from Cattle Crossroads (in Danish)
Feral kinetics and cattle research within planetary boundaries
Publication in Animals
New cows on old grass
Publication in Tidsskriftet Kulturstudier (in Danish)
Sustainable animal production in Denmark: Anthropological interventions
Publication in Sustainability
Podcast: The future of green farm animals
Podcast from Dansk Veterinærtidsskrift (in Danish)

Researchers

Name	Title	Phone	E-mail
Brichet, Nathalia	Associate Professor	+4535337814	E-mail
Brieghel, Signe Skjoldborg	Teaching Associate Professor	+4535331497	E-mail
Eriksson, Kari Bækgaard	PhD Fellow	+4535327185	E-mail
Hastrup, Frida	Associate Professor - Promotion Programme	+4551298963	E-mail
Lastein, Dorte Bay	Teaching Associate Professor	+4535332732	E-mail
Nielsen, Camilla Kirketerp	Assistant Professor	+4527143148	E-mail
Nielsen, Liza Rosenbaum	Professor	+4535333015	E-mail

Funding

Independent Research Fund Denmark

Project period:
1 February 2021 – 30 April 2025

PI: Frida Hastrup

Together with the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science we present the exhibition "Production animals: a gallery for the art of the possible" (in Danish).

CSF