Research Project
Redacted: Suicide, Big Ag, and Climate Crisis / Elegy for the American Farmer
Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture / Public Domain / Redactions added to original
- Principal Investigator
- Barger, Carla
Abstract
Redacted aims to address the rising suicide rate among US Farmers by using an interdisciplinary approach that marries science and poetry. The project has three phases. Currently I'm compiling data and documents on large agricultural operations, the worsening climate crisis, and suicide rates. In the second phase, I'll visually present this information to make obvious the inextricability and interconnectedness of big ag, the climate crisis, and suicide. Lastly, I'll use the data and the visualizations to create ciphers, prompts, and constraints to write a collection of poems that speaks to what digital data alone cannot— the visceral cost of environmental and human degradation.