Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the discursive and material translations of Climate Smart Agriculture in Argentina. In particular it explores the narratives surrounding the creation of climate ready soybeans and the socio-technical networks that will be necessary for their deployment at the local level.

Paper long abstract:

Given the effects of climate change on agriculture, participants at the Conventions of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCCC) on Climate Change have expressed the need to protect humanity's food security. This need has been conceptualized through a guiding framework known as Climate-Smart-Agriculture (CSA) that combines adaptation and mitigation strategies and that include solutions as diverse as weather information technologies and the development of climate-ready seeds. Contributing to the field of anthropological study of climate change, biosecurity, and agricultural biotechnology, this paper addresses the problem of CSA by examining the discursive and material translations and social effects due to the circulation of Soy HB4. First, the paper asks how narratives of climate change are translated from international discussions to national political debates as illustrated by the Argentine case. Second, it asks how these narratives are translated into concrete technological solutions, such as climate-ready seeds, and how these technologies function at the local level. Given the fact that climate change is not a uniform phenomenon and that its effects are not felt homogenously across different geographies, a technological solution with universal presumptions seems paradoxical. How do these seeds travel from the laboratories to the field? What type of socio-technical networks are constructed around uniform climate-ready seeds to make them function in the diverse ecosystems where they are planted?