Presentation short abstract

We show how rural communities in Chile confront the Global Pesticides Complex through collaborative, multiscalar strategies that deepen socio-ecological understanding and advance concrete political proposals and interspecies alliances

Presentation long abstract

There is a growing body of sophisticated and relevant analysis on the transformations of the Global Pesticides Complex (GPC) and its socio-ecological impacts, particularly in the Global South. However, we see a pending need to deepen further an approach that integrates situated and collaborative socio-ecological perspectives on how the GPC manifests and affects rural territories. In this context, drawing on ten years of collaborative research on the expansion of agribusiness in Chile, we propose a multiscalar and multidimensional understanding of community agencies that confront the socio-ecological impacts of pesticides in their territories.

Chile is a country that underwent an early and radical neoliberalization of agri-food production and is often presented as an exemplary and sophisticated model of agro-export-driven economic growth based on fresh fruit production. It is also one of the Latin American countries that has advanced most quickly in adopting “Agriculture 4.0” models as an “innovative and sustainable solution”.

In this scenario, we observe that rural organizations, communities, and critical scholars have moved beyond the strategies developed in previous decades—those based on open confrontation with agribusiness and on documenting contamination as evidence of pesticide impacts. In addition to these, current strategies have focused on: dismantling the narrative of Agriculture 4.0 as a sustainable option; deepening the understanding of the socio-ecological damage caused by pesticides in the territory beyond human health; strengthening interspecies alliances as concrete propositions for confronting contamination; and designing political proposals that make it possible to “sow hope” in order to remain in their territory.