Presentation short abstract

While critical analysis can be generative, it can also provoke ethical tensions, political challenges, and emotional labour. This presentation draws on personal experience of tensions with a research participant, to reflect on how critique might contribute to viable and just agroecological futures.

Presentation long abstract

Scholars are increasingly highlighting the importance of de-romanticising agroecology, and analysing the power dynamics and political economic tensions of agroecological transitions. However, the emotional labour, ethical tensions, and political challenges of conducting and experiencing these kinds of critical analysis are less frequently acknowledged.

In this presentation I share my experience of conducting critical analysis of agroecological projects, and the response I received from one of my interlocuters on reading my work. My research had identified class tensions, discontented workers, capitalistic management practices and value systems in his enterprise, and although I had attempted to highlight the structural imperatives shaping these characteristics, my representation understandably provoked a response.

In this presentation I reflect on the lessons that might be learned from this experience. I identify particular challenges associated with conducting ethnographic research within agroecological movements, where social networks are small, researcher/participant boundaries are often blurred, and political identities are strong. I question how we might conduct critical analyses that build, rather than break down agroecological movements, and how we might share findings and engage research participants in ways that encourage dialogue and collaboration. How do we highlight structural imperatives that individuals are facing, while also holding people accountable for their actions?

While critique can undoubtedly be generative, navigating the relational challenges that ensue requires emotional work and interpersonal skills from both researcher and participant – something that needs to be acknowledged as we seek to build feminist solidarities and engage in research that contributes to viable and just agroecological futures.

Presentation short abstract

The means through which agroecology gains legitimacy in the U.S. remain under examined. How has U.S. agroecology relied on the state and industrial institutions it seeks to transform for its reproduction and credibility? What knowledge politics make this dependence both possible and invisible?

Presentation long abstract

Agroecology—the science, the practice, and the social movement—is an alternative to industrial agriculture and often described as a “territory in dispute,” positioned between grassroots emancipatory projects and processes of industrial co-optation (Giraldo & Rosset, 2017). While agroecological movements across the world are rooted in place-based and pluriversal ways of knowing, the scientific field in the U.S. has often reproduced Western positivist norms that systematize and reduce the knowledge of campesino, Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, communities of color, and peasant farmers into scientific techniques. As agroecology gains momentum in the U.S., U.S. scholars increasingly call for coordinated research agendas and institutional recognition to concretize agroecology’s place within national food and agricultural policy. Yet the means through which agroecology gains legitimacy, authority, and credibility remain under examined. How has agroecology in the U.S. relied on the very state and industrial institutions it seeks to transform for its reproduction, legitimacy, and memory? What knowledge politics make this dependence both possible and invisible? Using the pivotal 2023 U.S. Agroecology Summit as a conjunctural case study, this paper traces a materialist account of agroecology’s institutionalization that situates agroecology not outside of, but through, structures of state power, philanthro-capitalism, and industrial agriculture.

Presentation short abstract

Participatory action research processes involved learning about agri-food transformation processes with communities of practice in Zimbabwe. Story-sharing and deep listening communicated affective disturbances that generated situated opportunities for agroecological thinking, being and doing.

Presentation long abstract

This paper shares findings from a participatory action research process that involved learning about agri-food transformation processes with communities of practice in Zimbabwe. Articulating a decolonial mindset and praxis, an array of creative and participatory methods, including digital storytelling with marginalised agrifood practitioners, were deployed. We adopted an appreciative approach to how Zimbabwean communities have responded to material and affective challenges driven by corporate-driven agrifood systems, climate change impacts, and entrenched social inequalities.

Methodological processes honoured and unpacked the biographical, embodied and emotional experiences of practitioner-storytellers. Embedded in a capacity-building programme, more than fifty digital stories were completed by participants over 18 months, communicating lived and situated changes towards more sustainable foodways (sometimes, but not always, articulated as ‘agroecological’). We then co-created an e-book, a website and a podcast series. The story-sharing process was highly generative, informing systems mapping, community actions and policy recommendations.

As research data or artefacts, the stories revealed conflicting practices and experiences of change, as well as different perspectives on what needs to be sustained or changed. Importantly, stories narrated the embodied, affective and (sometimes) traumatic experiences that often form the prologue to how agroecological transitions occurred. Story-sharing and deep listening communicated ambiguous, perceptual ruptures and affective disturbances that open up opportunities for different ways of thinking, being, connecting and doing with/through food. These findings add nuance and geographical (as well as biographical) contextuality to how we can understand agroecological transition.

Presentation short abstract

In the UK, there is a schism between the anti-capitalist ideals of agroecology and how it is practiced on farms. In response, I investigate the possibilities and obstacles to actively composing a labour justice movement and how this is part of a broader anti-fascist ecosocialist political project.

Presentation long abstract

In the UK, there is a schism between agroecology's anti-capitalist ideals and how it is practiced on farms. Agroecological farms are reproducing highly exploitative capitalist labour relations as documented by trade union Solidarity Across Land Trades (2025). Rather than representing a political movement capable of displacing imperialist capitalist agriculture, agroecology represents a sub-sector within agriculture. Additionally, farm-business owners have largely become the main protagonist in shaping and characterising agroecology in the UK as a “movement”. In response, I call to attention the less romantic but nevertheless underattended issue of capitalist labour regimes and what can be learnt by recentering the farm worker and ecosocialist politics in UK agroecology.

Taking an ecosocialist class lens when examining labour injustices in the organisation of farm work can help advance socially just farming livelihoods and ultimately advance agroecology.

My study focuses on the labour intensive agroecological production of fruit and vegetables, guided by theories of feminist ecosyndicalism, critical agrarian movements, and working-class environmentalism. I pursue a three-folded empirical enquiry into:

-Understandings of class by farm workers (who I refer to as those working on a farm they do not own, for or without pay, including apprentices, cooperative workers, and those in horticultural education), how farm workers envision the future of agroecological jobs, farm workers' sense of agency in agroecology as a political project, and their interest in collective worker organising,

- Relational and supportive infrastructure (like unions), helping build and communicate labour justice,

- Experiences and obstacles of farms attempting to prefigure beyond-capitalist workplaces

Presentation short abstract

This study focuses on agroecological labourers in an ethnographic case study in Zagreb. With a relational practice theory approach, it discusses the construction of agroecological productive labour and farmers’ working conditions, challenging agroecology as an anticapitalist project.

Presentation long abstract

Drawing on critical agrarian studies (Gerber 2020, Van der Ploeg 2022) and the sociology of work (Domount et al. 2015, Darnhofer 2020), this presentation shows and discusses work and working conditions of agroecological labourers (both family members of family farms and employed farm workers) of Zagreb’s market-directed farms. The study adopts a relational practice-theory approach to understand work and working conditions of agroecological labourers, focusing on daily working practices. This research is based on a 6-month ethnography, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, field notes, and engagement with local alternative food networks.

The analysis focuses on two aspects: the construction of agroecological productive labour and farmers’ working conditions.

Firstly, it explores how the agroecological productive labour is constructed through a process of daily social learning. Several factors impact this development, including employment relationships, employees’ presence and farm mechanisation. Regardless of the farm type (business or peasant-like), the work construction process remains similar.

Independent of farm-type, business or peasant-like, gender roles associated with food production tasks remain fixed. Additionally, women perform reproductive tasks typically associated with the regular maintenance of a household.

Secondly, the analysis shows how working conditions are implemented, indicating a pattern of exploitative and precarious work experiences. Nonetheless, exploitation and precarity carry a different meaning depending on the farm employment relationship.

Overall, the practice analysis demonstrates how agroecological work is based on capitalist relations of productive and reproductive labour. It can be concluded that without a shift in labour construction, agroecology remains a food production alternative within capitalism.

Presentation short abstract

We explore how gendered land tenure pathways shape agroecological transitions and socio-ecological interactions. Drawing on participatory field evidence, the study examines how land rights, access, and power relations influence farmers’ capacity to rework ecologies toward agrarian sustainability.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation examines how land tenure relations and gendered rights determine pathways of agroecological transition within smallholder mixed farming systems. While agroecology is increasingly recognized as a transformative approach to sustainable food systems, its realization is inherently embedded in existing access and property regimes and social hierarchies. Situating the theory of access in a socio-ecological intersectionality lens, the study explores how men and women farmers negotiate access to land, resources, and ecological knowledge to rework production systems amid climate and socio-economic pressures. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative evidence from Ghana, the analysis reveals how differentiated tenure arrangements, such as family allocation, rental, and customary inheritance, mediate farmers’ capacity to adopt and sustain agroecological practices such as crop rotation, agroforestry, and minimum/zero tillage. It highlights how these arrangements intersect with gender norms and ecological conditions to co-produce uneven outcomes in resilience, agency, and ecological care. By linking rights and responsibilities to the material practices of cultivation, this presentation contributes to understanding agroecological transitions not only as technical or ecological shifts, but as deeply social and political processes of reclaiming rights and reworking ecologies.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation offers a critical reading of agroecology. The analysis articulates Latin American discourse, Mexican policies, and the local case of Hopelchén, where the perspectives of young Mayans show more diverse futures than those assumed by agroecology.

Presentation long abstract

Based on a framework of studies on the temporalities of the future, this presentation proposes a critical reading of agroecology; a narrative that offers hope in the face of a present-future in crisis, based on the transformation of the global agri-food system into a local one led by peasant and indigenous peoples and communities and their ancestral knowledge, mainly from Latin America. The reading is developed from three overlapping dimensions: the narrative-discursive dimension of Latin American agroecology, Mexican national policy—intertwined with global policy—and the local dimension of the municipality of Hopelchén in southeastern Mexico. From this last dimension, the views and perspectives of rural Mayan youth reveal the coexistence of temporalities that shape the imaginaries of the future of contemporary rural actors, beyond the representations that the epochal narrative of agroecology presents about these groups. This research contributes a critical anthropological-social perspective to agroecology, as well as to studies on the anthropology of the future and political ecology.

Presentation short abstract

The UK agroecological movement romanticises unpaid, precarious work as ‘love’, under a hetero-patriarchal ideology of the ‘family farm’. Applying a feminist-Marxist and queer lens, I challenge how this ideology excuses exploitation and I chart the emerging workers’ movement as a queer resistance.

Presentation long abstract

Whilst the British agroecological movement is committed to principles of social and ecological justice, worker mistreatment and underpayment are common in the sector. I have identified that a hetero-patriarchal ideology underpins these systemic poor protections, with unpaid work romanticised as family-like relationships between employers and employees, workers donating their labour out of their love for the movement. By positioning the small family farmer as the revolutionary subject of agroecology, precarity and non-payment for an often feminised workforce is ignored, or justified as necessary for the movement's survival. As such, the British agroecological sector promotes small-scale capitalism, upheld through heteronormative patriarchal values. Using a feminist-Marxist and queer perspective, I seek to unsettle this narrative, disrupting the values in British agroecology that protect the interests of capital and stymy the movement's radicalism. Using family abolitionist theory, I document how the ‘family farm’ obscures the material realities of exploited labourers and reinforces race, class, and gender marginalisation. Through my activist engagement in the emerging workers’ movement, I chart how our work is a queer resistance, working to trouble the hegemonic hetero-patriarchal values of British agroecology. I follow Gibson-Graham’s (1999) use of ‘queer(y)ing’ as a methodological tool that looks beyond sexuality and gender, a way to disrupt hegemony and create new alternate worlds with fluid, open, borderless opportunities for queer futures. I use ‘queering’ to mean not the insertion of queer bodies into the movement and sector, but to disrupt, to challenge and to deviate, to unsettle pre-existing normative assumptions.

Presentation short abstract

What is low chemical agriculture, and why does a definition for it matter? Based on Costa Rica's proposal to FARM+, this paper explores the significance of defining such an ambiguous term, arguing that it could address essential political and social aspects of alternative farming transitions.

Presentation long abstract

FARM+ is a Global Environmental Facility-funded project that aims to support countries in transitioning from unsustainable agricultural practices to sustainable, climate-resilient farming. The project, to be implemented in several countries around the world, does not promote a particular agrarian model but invites countries to engage with different forms of less chemical-dependent agriculture, such as regenerative agriculture, agroecology, and/or organic agriculture. Costa Rica's proposal, developed over 2025, embraced the idea of "low chemical load agriculture" as an agrarian model that both fits all of them and represents a more realistic alternative to them. While the model was presented as self-explanatory, during the mandatory consultation process for the project, between May and July 2025, a member of Costa Rica's agroecology network suggested that the term needed an explanation. However, the project document, which was validated in October 2025, did not include any. In this paper, I take such a request for a definition seriously. What is low chemical agriculture, and why does a definition for it matter? I will argue that while such a model might be a more realistic solution to lower Costa Rica's high dependence on agrochemicals than other "romantic" models, it risks depoliticizing alternative farming transitions by overlooking the material politics and affective relations that underpin them. I conclude by speculating on how defining low chemical load agriculture could help unravel the ambiguities surrounding alternative farming transitions and perhaps turn it into a politically meaningful proposition.

Presentation short abstract

Utilising data from Italy and Portugal, this paper investigates the strategies and limits of community-supported agriculture initiatives to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their efforts to prefigure postcapitalist agroecological alternatives to capitalist agrifood systems.

Presentation long abstract

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives are spaces where diverse work relations are performed. CSA initiatives de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their effort to prefigure postcapitalist agroecological alternatives to dominant capitalist agrifood systems. However, these attempts to transform labour are often tentative, precarious and incomplete, thereby exposing the difficulties they face given their inevitable embeddedness in a capitalist-dominated socioeconomic system. Building on qualitative empirical data from Italy (16 CSA initiatives) and Portugal (3 CSA initiatives), this paper answers the following research questions: What type of strategies do CSA initiatives employ to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour? How are work relations shaped by the micro-politics of and power relations in these initiatives? What are the potential and barriers to more accomplished post-capitalist labour? We observe substantial difficulties in realising postcapitalist labour, as CSA initiatives are constrained by external requirements (e.g., legislation) and by members’ continued integration into the capitalist system. While CSA initiatives diversify labour by creating alternative capitalist and non-capitalist work relations alongside capitalist ones, they often do not sufficiently unmake the imbalances of power within capitalism. These findings point to the importance of decentralising decision-making power within CSA initiatives and addressing the oppressive power relations ossified in their local and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the transformation of labour in CSA initiatives could be supported by deepening the collective process of deliberate deconstruction of valuation logics and predefined roles (within CSA initiatives), and legal frameworks (broader agrifood system). National CSA Networks could play a crucial supportive role in such deconstruction.

Presentation short abstract

While India’s push for “natural farming” aims to boost farmer welfare, we present analysis from Madhya Pradesh, India that shows that without material support it becomes moralizing “lifestyle environmentalism,” reinforcing inequality and limiting agroecology’s emancipatory potential.

Presentation long abstract

Recently, India’s government has begun promoting a form of agriculture that it bills as “agroecological” through its “National Mission of Natural Farming” (NMNF). While the government of India positions NMNF as a crucial way to address stagnant farmer income and health/nutrition while also ensuring environmental conservation, there remain significant gaps in knowledge around their implications on multiple dimensions of justice. This paper addresses this gap through utilizing an environmental justice framework that is informed by feminist political ecology to analyze qualitative and ethnographic research from two districts in eastern Madhya Pradesh. Drawing on our data, the paper argues that agroecology promotion absent material resource support amounts to a moralizing rhetoric or “farmer lifestyle environmentalism”. Our research highlights several justice concerns in our field site from agro-ecology promotion that include the further marginalization land-poor individuals and an emergent identity politics where only more elite could “go natural.” The analysis concludes by drawing on farmer narratives to discuss how more structural transformations in rural agrarian spaces are key not just for agroecology to be viable for the most marginal, but also to ensure it is an emancipatory project rather than deepening injustices.