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Accepted Paper:
"Capital doesn't allow temporary nature of care": family dairy farms' understanding of care, nature and reproduction
Bibiana Martinez Alvarez
(Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Galician dairy family farms understanding of care, in a context of national and supranational policies that foster a competitive and intensive agriculture, acquires a new an important dimension in the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
In a seminar in Barcelona in 2016, Arturo Escobar argued: “Capital doesn’t allow temporary nature of care”. He meant that capital leaves no time for care, for social reproduction. This idea has been central to understanding the issue of care in the context of family dairy farms in Galicia (north-west of Spain), where I have been working in the last years. For these farmers, care is an important issue related with nature, since they see themselves as caretakers of the environment. They also understand sustainability (in an emic way) from the perspective of sustainable livelihoods, which are strongly imbricated with care regarding their family (the domestic group), community and the environment (landscape and animals). However, this perspective of care is problematic in a context of national and supranational (EU) policies that foster a competitive and intensive agriculture, where the main demand of these family farms is a just price for the milk they produce. Feminist perspectives raise the sustainability of life and the relocation of life to the centre of the economy to rethink the classic dichotomy between production and reproduction. The centrality of life as a fabric that includes reproduction and farming as inseparable, resonates with farmers’ demands when struggling for a just price that guarantees their livelihoods and dignity. All these issues come to the fore and take on a new dimension when the Covid-19 pandemic breaks out.