This study examines a desert agricultural community in southern Israel undergoing a transition from intensive farming to renewable energy production. Using the concept of agricultural infrastructure, I explore the imaginaries, materiality, and practices that sustain life in this space and the environmental transformations accompanying this shift. Agricultural infrastructure is inherently political: it defines hierarchical boundaries between communities, reinforces land control, and structures relationships between humans and non-humans in the Anthropocene. It enables the construction of material and semiotic worlds composed of pipes, insects, labor, seeds, water, and, increasingly, solar panels.
Through ethnographic research and the lens of political ecology, I analyze how farmers have been incentivized to install solar panels on agricultural structures and land, selling electricity to the national grid. This shift alters the meaning of agriculture, providing financial stability—especially for older farmers—through a fixed state income, independent of market fluctuations. However, it also raises key questions: How does renewable energy reshape agricultural infrastructure? How does it affect farmers’ self-perception? What are the political and environmental implications of this transformation? This study demonstrates how agricultural infrastructure evolves in response to economic, geopolitical, and social pressures. By integrating renewable energy, it simultaneously reinforces existing power structures while also generating new socio-environmental configurations.
