Presentation short abstract

We critique Western-centric histories and knowledges around organic farming, showing how they largely sideline Indigenous and peasant organic traditions. Using decolonial lens, it offers a broader genealogy and exposes how Western standards may reproduce inequities in the rest of the world.

Presentation long abstract

In the context of accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and declining agricultural land, organic farming has become a widely promoted solution. Yet current interpretations of “organic” are largely governed by certification regimes and strict rule-based standards that delineate which practices qualify and which do not. Moreover, the genealogy of organic farming is commonly traced to intellectual developments in German and Anglo-American contexts, obscuring its broader historical roots. We argue that this framing produces a narrow and incomplete conception of organic agriculture, its origins, purposes, and potential contributions to ecological futures. It marginalises the long-standing practices of peasant and agrarian communities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, whose farming traditions have long embodied principles of care, ecological balance, and reciprocity, well before “organic” became formalised and institutionalised in the West. Adopting a decolonial approach informed by Indigenous and peasant ontologies, the paper proposes an expanded and plural understanding of organic farming that challenges the hierarchies through which Western definitions maintain epistemic dominance. This perspective foregrounds grassroots knowledge and Indigenous know-how that are typically rendered invisible within colonial modernity. We therefore reconstruct a genealogy of organic agriculture rooted in these alternative knowledge systems, while critically assessing how Western institutionalisation of “organic” reproduces neocolonial dynamics, shaping what counts as organic, who participates in it, and whose livelihoods it serves. In doing so, the paper contributes to broader calls from peasant movements to recognise diverse local and Indigenous practices as integral to truly organic agricultural futures.