Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.

中文翻译：

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看到绿色：北极农业前沿的生命周期☆

长期以来，对空旷、青翠土地的想象一直推动着农业疆域的扩张。如今，气候变化、粮食不安全和经济前景正在为环北极地区新的农业前沿注入活力。在本文中，我利用大量档案和人种学证据来分析二十世纪中叶和二十一世纪最近加拿大西北地区农业发展的叙述。我认为早期的边境想象在其目前的生命周期中相对完整。推动北部农业前沿兴起的不仅仅是高潮力量，还有资本主义、政府权力、定居者殖民主义以及对这些力量的抵抗等更加分散和结构性的力量。我还展示了社会、政治和基础设施限制如何继续阻碍西北地区的农业发展，并讨论小农和土著社区如何以不同的方式在当地粮食系统中定位农业生产。本文通过强调支撑边境想象的国家驱动和主导公共叙事与将其限制在西北地区农业边境的社会、文化和物质现实之间的争议空间，为边境和北方农业文献的批判性辩论做出了贡献。