Paper short abstract:

Based on a case study of the intensive agriculture in Murcia (Spain), this paper examines the role of agricultural standards on the construction and representation of environment.

Paper long abstract:

The 2016 phytoplankton bloom in the Mar Menor lagoon (Murcia, Spain), as the final episode of a long process of eutrophication, and the appearance of thousands of dead fish on the shore in 2019 made visible one of the most important national ecological disasters of the last decades. The scope of these events brought into the public sphere the debate on the effectiveness of public and private regulations that protect the lagoon and control the environmental impact of agricultural activity. The Mar Menor lagoon is a strategic socio-environmental enclave to analyze, on the one hand, the impact of intensive agriculture on human and extra-human nature (Moore, 2020) and, on the other hand, the role of private standards of quality, safety and sustainability in the control of environmental pollution. This communication argues that standards are based on an abstract and instrumental representation of Nature that separates agricultural practices from their effects on the territory and landscape. In a context of strong socio-environmental tensions and conflicts and in the framework of a complex and hybrid regulatory space, we show how the intensive application of quality standards play a key role in the construction of the environment. The research is based on a methodological strategy that combines the analysis of secondary data (statistical sources, documentary analysis of public and private standards) with in-depth interviews with representative actors of the institutional network of standards and the main associations of local producers and irrigation communities.