Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at toxic flows on a micro-scale, exploring the circulation of agricultural pesticides between agrochemical dealers, smallholder farmers, bodies and the environment in western Kenya, describing their everyday lived experiences in the wider context of a postcolonial political economy.

Paper long abstract:

The use of pesticides in agriculture is widespread. The introduction of pesticides is associated with higher crop yields and less vulnerability to crop failure, and therefore seen as an important strategy to achieve food security worldwide, and particularly in developing countries. However, there are increasing concerns about links between the use of agricultural pesticides and various detrimental effects on human health and the environment. For smallholder farmers in western Kenya, agricultural pesticides are increasingly a means to contain different threats to their crops exacerbated by climate change and global trade. Their practices of pesticide use involve toxic flows on a micro-scale, from agrochemical dealers to users, and from users to bodies and the environment. This paper examines local networks of pesticide distribution and use, and notes the concerns and views of farmers, families and agrochemical dealers in a small village and the surrounding area. Based on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2019, it looks at the everyday lived experiences of selling, buying and applying pesticides in the context of subsistence farming, and how these are tied to market forces, economic practices and the realities of government actors. Particular attention will be paid to interacting social and environmental conditions and syndemic effects that shape the circulation of substances, pollution, environmentalism, global health, risk and violence in a postcolonial political economy.