This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services, which are fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to describe our relationships with society, the world and the biosphere with metaphors from economics, which has specific understandings of value. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognise the intrinsic value of the ecosystems, on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contributions to life on Earth.

This experiment consists of one square metre of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored and displayed to the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for the estimation of the undervalued and overexploited ‘work’ of the biosphere.

Borbála Szalai