Index of Contemporary Agriculture

One wheat season, from fieldwork to distant decisions

A crop grows in a field, but the conditions under which it is planted, measured, financed and sold may be set elsewhere. Index of Contemporary Agriculture follows wheat through one season, tracing the distance between agricultural work in Banat and decisions made across the grain supply chain, as far as Constanța.

Drawing on interviews with farmers, input producers, machinery manufacturers, dealers, traders and port operators, alongside contracts, statistics and technical documents, the map sets ten farming operations against five levels: local production, regional processing, national infrastructure, global commodity trade and finance. Each entry pairs a drawing with an explanation in Romanian and English.

Five questions guide visitors across the map: who controls seed reproduction, turns field measurements into machine instructions, keeps machinery operating, calculates grain prices and determines whether land is legible to the state? The project calls these channels of information vectors. They reveal how work on the farm can be shaped by standards, permissions or information controlled elsewhere.

Read horizontally, the index follows the agricultural season. Read vertically, it shows where the conditions governing each operation are established—and how a single action, such as spraying a field, can generate both an agronomic record and evidence for regulatory compliance.

Credits
Source imagery: Alex Todirică and Unsplash