Paper short abstract:

One strategy of global agribusiness to extend its control over land is the subordinate integration of family farming into its production chains. This works through a variety of more and less visible forms of power but is also contested as the example of the Ecuadorian corn sector shows.

Paper long abstract:

In Ecuador, hard yellow corn for feed production has become the most important product for small family farming in terms of cultivated area. As part of the dominant global agri-food system, the monocultural production model is based on a high level of dependence on agrobusiness companies that import seeds and agrochemicals and also control the feed production market, which leads to a pronounced homogenization and financialization of production, dependence on credit and external inputs and, therefore, is accompanied by a loss of peasant autonomy.

The subordinate integration of family farming into these agroindustrial chains cannot be understood only in terms of top-down exercise of power but is strongly based on a series of "quieter registers of power" (Frederiksen & Himley, 2020), including modes of subjectification and knowledge regimes. For the analysis of the complexity of these relationships that generate transformations of landscapes, of ways of producing but also of understanding the world and oneself, the concept of dispositive is applied to examine the confluence of both material and immaterial aspects that guide transformations.

This paper builds on field research and the application of ethnographic methods in the Ecuadorian coastal and highland region. Its approach seeks to contribute to debates on land use change, the complexity of power relations at work between agrobusiness and family farming and on the search for alternatives in the face of the current socio-ecological crisis.