Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

We studied how rice farmers have engaged in commercial farming as a result of irrigated scheme rehabilitation in Cambodia, and then responded to sustainable models proposed lately. We argue that farming trajectories are “scripted” by schemes rehabilitation and emerging commercial infrastructures.

Paper long abstract

Investments in modern irrigation played a major role in transition from subsistence to capital-intensive commercial farming through the "Green revolution" process. The limitations of this model have been widely highlighted, and more sustainable development pathways (e.g. agroecology) are increasingly promoted in response; however, the role of irrigation development within these trajectories remains contested. In Cambodia, water-based intensification and related green-revolution practices (multiple cropping seasons, high yielding varieties, synthetic inputs, mechanization) have emerged relatively recently (circa the late 1990s). The rehabilitation process, drawing on schemes inherited from the Khmer Rouge era, constitutes the main agricultural investment, with priority given to physical infrastructure over institutional support.

This research draws on an empirical case study from an irrigated rice-growing scheme in Battambang province, north-west Cambodia, undergoing rehabilitation since the 2010s, and where numerous initiatives promoting sustainable agriculture and collective water management are taking place. We studied how farmers lately engaged into commercial farming dynamics thanks to recent irrigation development and associated initiatives, and how they considered sustainable farming models proposed.

Through qualitative field survey, we showed that the temporal precedence of irrigation schemes rehabilitation over initiatives related to institutional support and sustainability, combined with its dominance in terms of allocated resources has led to an unforeseen intensification of practices (e.g. synthetic fertilizer use increased from 50-100 kg.ha.cycle to 300-400 kg.ha.cycle). We argue that these dynamics « script » practices, bring specific industry infrastructures into being, and constrain the adoption of pathways toward sustainability, even though some farmers still attempt to pursue alternative trajectories.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

Based on a qualitative survey of professionals involved in testing and demonstrating biological alernatives to pesticides, this article explores the role of knowledge infrastructures in hindering the development of these technologies in France.

Paper long abstract

In France, biological alternatives have been identified as one of the main solutions to reduce the consumption of pesticides. But their dissemination remains limited and encounters numerous obstacles. This paper investigates in depth one of these hurdles: experimental practices and infrastructures.

In France, many organisations are involved in various capacities in activities related to the testing and/or demonstration of plant protection methods: firms, research organisations, technical institutes, chambers of agriculture, cooperatives and trading companies, etc. Based on a qualitative survey of professionals involved in testing and demonstrating biocontrol solutions, this article explores the role of innovation infrastructure and professional testing practices in hindering the development of biocontrol in France.

The aim is to understand the circulation of biocontrol technologies across the spaces (experimental stations, farms, control plots) where their effectiveness is assessed, tested and demonstrated. We examine how the effectiveness of these methods is defined, qualified and measured as well as the infrastructural, methodological, technical and professional issues raised by the dissemination of these methods.

We examine how the effectiveness of biocontrol methods is presented by stakeholders involved in their promotion. This paper reflects and analyses the debates and conflicts of definition surrounding the effectiveness of these methods and their assessment. In doing so, we identify how knowledge infrastructure suited for chemical pesticides impede the dissemination of these alternative technologies.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

Whether agroecology and CRISPR can mix remains contested on epistemic and ontological grounds,. Yet little empirical evidence exists on practical feasibility. We address this gap by systematically mapping key infrastructural elements needed for CRISPR across 163 Neglected and Underutilised Species.

Paper long abstract

Whether and how agroecology and CRISPR could mix remains contested (Montenegro de Wit, 2022). While some proponents argue that CRISPR can support transitions to agroecology by enabling low-input, locally adapted crops, critics contend that it is incompatible with agroecology across ontological, epistemic, and ownership dimensions. Yet little research has examined whether such integration is feasible in practice.

We contribute to this debate by showing that research infrastructures for CRISPR fundamentally constrain its application in agroecology. Specifically, we investigate the availability of knowledge resources for Neglected and Underutilised Species (NUS), which play a central role in agroecological diversification.

Building on STS and infrastructure studies, we introduce the concept of knowledge resources—codified scientific resources such as genome assemblies, trait annotations, datasets, and laboratory protocols—as an analytical lens to understand how research infrastructures enable and constrain innovation.

We apply this framework to a comprehensive set of 163 NUS in the African context. Through desk research and expert workshops, we systematically identified and collected available knowledge resources for each crop to assess their availability. We find that although NUS are frequently highlighted as central to resilient and locally adapted farming systems, they often lack the genomic data and supporting knowledge resources required to make genome editing feasible. We thus show how CRISPR’s enabling infrastructures actively constrain its application in diverse crops.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

This paper explores the development of three alternative agriculture practices in the Netherlands through a multilevel sustainability transition perspective. By comparing these examples, we discuss possible leverage points for food system transformation toward sustainability.

Paper long abstract

The ongoing degradation of terrestrial ecosystems is increasingly acknowledged as an urgent problem. Because food systems affect land use and the quality of the environment, there is widespread recognition that conventional agriculture should become more sustainable to halt biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. The transformation toward alternative and more sustainable forms of agriculture is slow and faces many difficulties. For instance market structure, agricultural practices, governance structures and knowledge systems are hurdles. This paper explores the development of three alternative agriculture practices in the Netherlands through a multilevel sustainability transition perspective. By comparing these examples with conventional agriculture, we discuss possible leverage points for food system transformation toward sustainability.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

The conflict between modern and alternative food systems, such as regen ag, can be usefully understood as a struggle for a different kind of infrastructure. I illustrate how regen ag practitioners and thinkers seek to a food system which reproduces itself through infrastructures of emplacement.

Paper long abstract

Modern food systems seek to override socio-ecological place-specificity; alternative food movements seek to preserve it. Drawing on Mario Blaser’s recent work (2025), I argue that this central conflict can be usefully understood as a struggle for a different kind of infrastructure.

Blaser proposes that modernity spreads through infrastructures of displacement – material and immaterial practices which override the specificity of places, and which produce extractivist relations. In contrast, infrastructures of emplacement are those which ground (a) people in specific places, and which produce relations of reciprocity. Indigenous ways of being offer examples of infrastructures of emplacement. However, how to build such practices of emplacement from within modern societies, for example within alternative food movements?

In this paper, I share early findings from an ongoing research project on cultivating emplacement in regenerative agriculture. Bottom-up regen ag initiatives seek to enable farmers (and the broader agri-food networks) to perceive and respond to place’s diversity and complexity so as to regenerate human and more-than-human life. This situates regen ag openly against modern industrial farming (including corporate regen ag), which seeks to pacify and silence socio-ecological place-specificity. As the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture writes (2026) “regeneration is not a prescription; it is a contextually intelligent response”. What does this mean in practice? I draw on ethnographic and qualitative research to illustrate how regen ag practitioners and thinkers seek to build individual and systemic practices of place-based response-ability: a food system which reproduces itself through infrastructures of emplacement.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

The paper argues that agricultural innovation systems privilege sustainable intensification, sidelining agroecological knowledge. It proposes redesigning epistemic infrastructures in projectified science, with reflexive societal readiness assessment as an method for enabling hermeneutic justice.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how contemporary agricultural innovation enacts different publics through the infrastructural arrangements that organize research, governance, and agricultural practices. This shows how infrastructures both distribute and delimit the hermeneutic resources through which actors’ experiences and claims become obscured. Using a multi sited ethnographic design, the paper examines three epistemic spaces that structure contemporary agricultural innovation: (1) a Horizon-Europe funded consortium, as an exemplar of “projectified” science where proposal templates, metrics, and regulatory requirements pre configure publics technology adopters; (2) policy and research regimes, where evaluation standards, funding architectures, training curriculums, and governance instruments selectively validate particular knowledge forms while marginalizing others; and (3) agroecology networks, which develops alternative epistemic infrastructures like festivals, seed networks, and communal learning spaces and cultivate publics grounded in experiential, socio ecological, and justice oriented ways of knowing. Across these sites, the paper traces how “publics” are made through infrastructural arrangements to enable certain concerns, experiences, and futures to become intelligible, and in doing so, shape the conditions in which ‘hermeneutic injustices’ are embedded. The study highlights how agricultural futures are shaped through frictions among these epistemic infrastructures and reveal the role of governance tools such as ‘Societal Readiness Assessment’, which both expose and delimit the possibilities for reflexive engagement.

Keywords- Epistemic infrastructure, Hermeneutic injustice, Agroecological knowledge, RRI, Societal readiness

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how social farming enterprises can foster agroecological transformation through their participation in heterogeneous infrastructural configurations that enable the flows and reinvestment of ecological, social, and economic value across territorial and organizational boundaries.

Paper long abstract

Social farming (SF) represents a novel approach to agriculture through which social services, education, and health care are delivered via farm-based activities for individuals experiencing life challenges. Positioned at the intersection of agroecology and regenerative economy practices, SF can generate socio-environmentally regenerative outcomes, including social inclusion, community resilience, food security, and enhanced resource circularity across the food value chain.

Adopting an infrastructure studies perspective, this paper examines how infrastructural configurations shape the development of regenerative loops within SF regenerative value networks (RVNs). Drawing on thirteen Italian SF initiatives, it explores how material and immaterial infrastructures, including relational, institutional, governance, and knowledge-based infrastructures, enable and constrain the emergence, maintenance, and expansion of these loops.

The findings reveal that regenerative loops emerge and stabilize where heterogeneous infrastructures can be effectively assembled into coherent socio-material configurations that facilitate the circulation and reinvestment of ecological, social, and economic resources across organizational and territorial boundaries. Conversely, fragmented institutional support, insecure land-tenure arrangements, regulatory constraints, and limited access to complementary infrastructures restrict the development of regenerative loops, often revealing the influence of productivist agrifood infrastructural legacies. The analysis further demonstrates how territorial and organizational contexts shape the capacity of SF enterprises to mobilize and reconfigure infrastructural resources to foster regenerative outcomes.

Building on these insights, the paper proposes the concept of synergistic infrastructural configurations of regeneration to advance studies of agroecological transformation by foregrounding the infrastructural conditions underpinning regenerative value creation. The findings offer implications for innovative policy interventions to advance SF across diverse territorial contexts.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

In the context of an unfolding effort to upcycle vegetable-processing waste using fermentation, this paper explores what makes some arrangements of a (food) system particularly resistant to change, despite desired intervention. It explores efforts by actors to tinker with this arrangement.

Paper long abstract

Roughly 30% of pre-consumer food ends up in lesser applications, such as in bio-fuel production or animal feed. The business partnerships, transport routes and processing infrastructures that have been erected to help food production companies get rid of their waste, reveals waste as an anticipated factor in the industry. However, the distribution of responsibility and agency for change is complex. This study zooms in on the vegetable-processing industry to disentangle how pre-consumer food waste continually emerges. We draw on two different (although overlapping) actor-network theory (ANT) approaches to network stability (Callon, Law), in our analysis of two cases in the Dutch vegetable-processing industry, who enrolled in a project that uses fermentation to make food-grade products from their waste. We found that waste initially emerges from “translations” required for two key “intermediaries” (Callon, 1990) that help stabilize and order the vegetable-processing network: public and private standards, and the business case. Public and private standards define what counts as “good” food, while the business case defines what courses of action are economically worthwhile. Together, these intermediaries make safe and predictable production possible, but they also stabilize waste. Informants found hope in enrolling novel actors (cows, researchers, microbes, consumers) into their network to help waste adapt to the requirements of these intermediaries, but these actors have their own conditions of possibility. We conclude with a lesson for future sustainability interventions that tinker with merely a practice itself, rather than unsettling the relations that produce stability in the network in which they are embedded.