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- Convenors:
-
Daniela Ana
(Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Economics in Transition Economies)
Natalia Buier (University of Barcelona)
Stefan Voicu (University of Bologna)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Susana Narotzky
(Universitat de Barcelona)
China Sajadian (Vassar College)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Thursday 25 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together ethnographically informed explorations of the re-articulation of labour and nature in contemporary agri-food systems and the contribution its analysis can make to understanding the compound socio-environmental crises of the present.
Long Abstract:
Agri-food systems are at the forefront of the compound socio-environmental crises of the present. We are in a period of turbulence which heightens the contradictions arising from the production of agricultural commodities underwriting the global political economy. It is now widely acknowledged that the metabolic circuits linking human and non-human nature through food production have engendered global transformations. Under recurrent pressures of binding ecological limits, agri-food systems have been historically confronted with cyclical crises of reproduction that entail searches for new fixes and the creation of new frontiers of extraction and exploitation. This panel aims to bring together theoretically ambitious ethnographic explorations that tackle the problem of articulating labour and nature within contemporary agri-food systems. It invites contributions aimed at answering questions such as: How do the attempts to contain the rising contradiction between use value and exchange value within accumulation pathways transform the political economy and discursive regimes of food provisioning? And how do pressures arising from ecological limits reshape the valuation of labour and land within agri-food food systems? Have recent developments such as the COVID-19 crisis resulted in meaningful reappraisals of the role of agricultural labour in broader processes of socio-ecological reproduction? While agroecology and food sovereignty approaches have called for an overhaul of agri-food systems, have they been able to tackle the situatedness of local-global connections in contemporary food provisioning? How can wage labour constitute itself as a socio-environmental subject within a transition away from agro-industrial production?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 25 July, 2024, -Allan Souza Queiroz (Ghent University)
Paper short abstract:
The study sheds light on worker-to-peasant transitions through land occupations in the sugarcane plantation-dominated areas in Alagoas, Northeast Brazil. Moreover, it explores the links between these worker-to-peasant transitions and the historical struggles that underpin them in plantation areas.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses ongoing social transformations in the sugarcane plantations of Alagoas, Northeast Brazil. Drawing on exploratory fieldwork, it analyses worker-to-peasant transformations in the heart of the Brazilian plantation, where manual labour is still used in large numbers. It highlights the emerging repeasantisation process overcoming historical patterns of labour exploitation. The study investigates these worker-to-peasant transitions through land occupations, which results in changes in labour practices and land use. It explores the links between these worker-to-peasant transitions and the historical forms of struggle in the plantation areas. By unearthing these trajectories, this research sheds light on how workers address the issues of precarious and exploited labour on sugarcane plantations and advance alternatives to contemporary plantations.
Paul Sperneac-Wolfer (University of Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
As heatwaves drastically rise, migrant foodworkers are at the forefront of climate vulnerabilities. Drawing on ethnographic research with Roma-/Romanian greenhouse workers in Austrian greenhouses, I ask: How do such biophysical transformations interact with existing forms and systems of oppression?
Paper long abstract:
Heatwaves are fundamentally unsettling food production. Inasmuch as workers have been historically positioned in marginalized and racialized conditions, they are at the forefront of new, climate-induced vulnerabilities.
The following contribution examines these issues in the Austrian context. Therein, 40% of Austria's vegetables are produced in a greenhouse cluster on the eastern outskirts of Vienna. This horticultural powerhouse is sustained by the daily labor of approximately 2000 Roma/Romanian workers who face blatant underpayment, overwork, and institutional neglect. In recent years, heatwaves have doubled, rendering the greenhouse an "extreme environment" (Saxton 2015). In addition to frequent qualms during work, my research indicates that two fatal accidents in the 2010s went unnoticed by labor authorities.
Drawing on 20-month long ethnographic-/activist engagement with Roma-/Romanian workers, I ask: How do biophysical transformations interact with existing forms and systems of oppression? And in what ways are labor, race and ecology implicated in the uneven distribution of heat-related health hazards on farmworker bodies?
I analyze these questions through the lens of “cheapening” (Moore 2015), here understood as a strategy of control that puts humans and the rest of nature to work in the least expensive way possible. Rooted in this lens, I examine a) the greenhouse labor process as an intentional structure (Benson 1989) that assembles and disciplines plants and
labor-power in specific ways; to b) understand the adverse impacts of heatwaves as co-constituted by racialized workplace hierarchies and symbolic work ethics. Together, this foregrounds the interlocking of both economic and ecological moments within accumulation-driven food production.
Denisse Román-Burgos (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines what happens to labour, theoretically and ethnographically, when the focus is primarily on environmental protection. In doing so, I seek to understand the idea of agri-food systems and to answer whether such an approach is useful in the age of monocrops.
Paper long abstract:
The Sierra Purhépecha region in the Mexican state of Michoacán is the world's leading producer of Hass avocados. This region underwent a process of transformation, especially after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, when the United States allowed the import of avocados from Mexico. As a consequence, illegal logging and water depletion gradually increased, but so did the attraction of cheap, disposable labour for all aspects of the production phase. Agricultural labourers are hired for limited tasks, such as picking avocados, pruning trees, or guarding orchards, and are often migrants from other Mexican states. In addition, Michoacán is one of Mexico's most dangerous states, often making international headlines for extortion and kidnappings by drug cartels. As one of Michoacán's most prosperous industries, avocado producers are a regular target of drug cartels.
In recent years, due to pressure from grassroots movements and local activists, the state government has launched some initiatives aimed at protecting the forests from illegal logging. However, the labour issue has only been addressed in relation to the formalisation of temporary agricultural labourers. This paper examines what happens to labour, theoretically and ethnographically, when the focus is primarily on environmental protection. In doing so, I seek to understand the idea of agri-food systems and to answer whether such an approach is useful in the age of monocrops.
Veronika Fabók (Mungo-Consulting Ltd.) Peter Kajner (WWF Hungary) Zsolt Pinke (ELTE Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences) Eszter Tormáné Kovács (Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
We conducted a qualitative inquiry with farmers in Bereg (situated in Eastern Hungary), as part of a project that aims to restore wetlands in the area. We found that the changes in the patterns of agricultural labor played an important role in transforming the environment in the area.
Paper long abstract:
Bereg is a predominantly agricultural area situated near the Ukrainian border. It is characterized by a decreasing population and the outmigration of the youth especially in certain small villages. The farm structure consisted of micro-farms (that typically produced food part-time) along fewer small and medium-sized family farms. Large estates were not prevalent in the area. A significant struggle for many of the farms (even for the more successful ones) was the aging of the farmer population, farm succession, and the difficulty of finding a workforce. On many occasions, children of farmers and other young residents decided to choose wage labor often outside the area or even the country, instead of farming. Often parents themselves discouraged their children from pursuing farming. They saw agriculture as hard work, a difficult livelihood, and a way of life that is disparaged by society. They wanted to “lift” their children. The difficulties of farm succession and the younger generation’s drifting towards wage labor along with difficulties in producing profitably resulted in land use change and transformation in the environment. Many farmers turned their lands into forests (with the help of subsidies) or left them uncultured. While changes in the patterns of labor have already played a part in the transformation of the environment, this trend can continue in the future. Wetland restoration intended to tackle the increasingly present drought in the area may materialize in unprofitable agricultural lands and in lands where farmers intend to quit farming.
Christine Hansen (IT University of Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
'Climate-smart' digital technologies such as precision agriculture are increasingly framed as a solution to decouple increased agricultural production from the sectors’ ecological footprint. This paper examines how digitalisation may be reconfiguring existing agricultural labour hierarchies.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on political economy, political ecology, critical agrarian studies and critical data studies, and in viewing the digitalisation of food systems in the Sub-Saharan African region as an unfolding sociotechnical phenomenon inextricably linked with international-development driven green transition and sustainable goals efforts, I aim to to contribute to debates on eco-economic decoupling and green growth agendas in the climate-change agriculture nexus, exploring furthermore techno-colonial relationships involving dispossession e.g. through datafication, and data-oriented agricultural governance. The expanding agritech industry across the bifurcated South African agricultural terrain adds gravity to agrarian questions of labour, particularly the consequences of capital-led digitalisation for the reconfiguration of labour arrangements. The following paper examines how digitalisation may be dislodging and reconfiguring existing agricultural labour hierarchies and how new technologies are affecting labour conditions; through for examples risks of increased exploitation, surveillance and labour displacement as well as questions relating to socio-political implications of data ownership, profitability and governance. Furthermore, I explore alternative climate mitigation and adaptation trajectories and contestations to techno-fix and technocratic framings of agrarian development and climate change response, such as those constructed in the approaches of food sovereignty and agroecology, which, in contrast to the Climate Smart Agriculture framework, work to foreground the political dimensions of production, distribution and consumption.
Natalia Buier (University of Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in northwestern Doñana, this presentation traces the way in which hegemonic constructions of agricultural work, farming and wealth allow those responsible for depletive dynamics to reposition themselves as environmental custodians.
Paper long abstract:
Located in southwestern Spain, Doñana is typically described as one of Europe’s most important wetlands. It is presently also the site of one of Europe’s most prominent groundwater conflicts, a result of decades’ long abstraction of water for berry production. Routinely covered by national and international media, groundwater conflicts in the region have recently seen a major new development. An agreement between the regional and the national government has been hailed as a success for the environmentalist movement and proof of the fact that the integration of agricultural interests and conservation plans is possible. Against this common reading, the presentation will trace the way in which hegemonic constructions of agricultural work, farming and wealth perpetuate the exclusion of those most affected by industrial agriculture and their silencing as environmental agents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in northwestern Doñana, I will discuss how the solutions so far rehearsed in the groundwater conflict allow those responsible for depletive dynamics to reposition themselves as environmental custodians. This process is part, I argue, of a broader process of revalorization of devalued agricultural assets. The success of this exclusionary strategy for the revalorization of agricultural assets is dependent on the blurring of the boundaries between agricultural production as a source of exchange value and agricultural production as a source of use values.
Morgan Jenatton (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Mexico))
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the tension between mechanisation and manual labour in "nature-adjacent" foods in Mexican and French supply chains. Building on a literature of value and valuation, it explores imaginaries of “naturalness” and the epistemological and socio-technical systems that underlie them.
Paper long abstract:
“We’re reclaiming natural tortillas,” shared the mother of a Mexican peasant family, who had begun commercialising handmade tortillas in a city where, for three decades, automated machines had dominated. Conversely, in rural France, a neighbourhood baker has installed a “TradiLoaf” machine, autonomously crafting “traditional” baguettes. Operable without technical baking expertise, the salespeople manage it throughout the day, while the bakers rest from their early-morning shifts.
This paper explores the tension between mechanisation and manual labour in “nature-adjacent” foods, based on an ethnographic comparison of the supply chains of bread in Ardèche and tortillas in Chiapas. Drawing on the French concept of filière (supply chain), I question not only consumer imaginaries of “naturalness,” but also how food makers interpret and integrate these notions into their practices. Building on a literature of value and valuation (Appadurai, Graeber, Boltanski, Esquerre), the paper underscores how diverse supply chain actors align their actions with multiple conceptions of quality, reflecting not only distinct socio-technical approaches but also fundamentally different conceptions of "nature" and materiality.
Handmade tortilla makers are valued for distancing themselves from the mechanisation of neoliberal Mexican technological politics, embodying a "return" to natural and domestic imaginaries. But this return, and the perceived entrepreneurial benefits of entering the capitalist labour market, often coincide with increased exploitation of care work. In France, it fuels the emergence of paradoxical systems of “automated tradition,” applying a uniformising logic to more sensorial know-how. Ultimately, what are the tensions that emerge from a discursive attachment of “naturalness” to manual labour?
Justine Leret (Frankfurt Goethe University)
Paper short abstract:
In line with climate policies, "living" soil is increasingly valued. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Paris Basin, I show how practices of valuation based on digital tools are taking shape on farms. By studying the case of French agroindustry, I contribute to the theory of (non)human labour.
Paper long abstract:
In the face of multiple environmental crises, European policies are responding mainly with technological, market-driven solutions. In agriculture, high-tech machinery such as climate-smart robots and sensors are often seen as opposed to agroecological solutions. However, soil life is also increasingly considered valuable, often based on its ability to store carbon in a stable and measurable way (Kearnes & Rickards 2017; Granjou & al 2020).
In France, large companies are promoting experimental “regenerative” farming projects on an industrial scale. Cereal and beet farmers are being pushed to account for their practices by measuring not only how much food they can produce, but also how much carbon their soil can store and how much “living soil” they can re/produce. Through public-private research partnerships, agronomists are developing digital tools to translate so-called agroecological soil practices into calculable and marketable data.
Drawing on multispecies ethnography, my research explores how these valuation practices take shape at the farm level. What human and non-human labour do they rely on? What kinds of knowledge and technologies do they require? How do they transform farmers’ relationships with their soils? It has been argued that Marxist value theory needs to be extended to better examine how non-human labour participates in the generation of capital value (Krzywoszynska 2020). I then ask how the value of “regeneration” changes the “nature” of agricultural labour in the context of the highly industrialised Paris Basin.
Donald Nonini (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Paper short abstract:
Globally, small-scale farmers cannot socially reproduce themselves. In the Southern U.S., this appears as a dilemma of rigidly opposed “interests” of farmers vs workers. Yet food corporations determine food’s “global price”: too expensive for workers to buy, too cheap for farmers to subsist from.
Paper long abstract:
Globalized food commodification and its deepening penetration through financialization (e.g. food commodity futures) have led to widespread crises in social reproduction in both global South and North. In the global South, commodification has expanded and deepened through neoliberal Structural Adjustment policies and global trade agreements that dispossess small-scale farmers through debt and monopoly power to expropriate their labor, land, water, and the food they grow. This renders them unable to access food sufficient for their own consumption, and consigns them to precarious wage labor.
Corporate control over food production for global markets plays out differently in the global North, in the opposed “interests” of small-scale “sustainable” agro-ecological farmers versus poor food consumers. While labor control by capital operates through intentional food insecurity imposed on large populations of urban workers, small farmers engaged in petty commodity production for local food markets are unable to earn income to maintain themselves. In Food Activism Today (Nonini and Holland 2024), a multi-sited study of local food activism in the southern U.S., this situation presented itself in the form of an ethnographic dilemma. To solve this dilemma, food activists’ unpaid labor sought both to provide food for food-insecure workers and to create market outlets through which small-scale “sustainable” farmers could make a living. However, at the structural level, the efforts of food activists almost invariably failed given the ubiquity of transnational food corporations’ determination of “the global price” of food: too expensive for workers to buy, too cheap for farmers to subsist from.