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.