Paper short abstract:

The transition to industrial agriculture has generated severe socio-environmental impacts, but has it also led to increased conflict? By contrasting the periods in biophysical, economic and political terms, we will determine whether agrarian protests are a response to changes in metabolism.

Paper long abstract:

The shift to an industrial metabolic regime has led to an increase in raw material extraction as well as waste generation. Social metabolism has allowed us to quantify the material and energy flows that a society exchanges with its environment. Meanwhile, Political Ecology has focused on the power relations inherent in the system and the conflicts that arise. The hypothesis is that the growth of the metabolic profile generates conflict, which can be analyzed from a socio-environmental perspective. To confirm this premise, the agricultural metabolism of Ecuador has been analyzed from 1961 to the present. The results show that the transition to an industrial agriculture has been based on both internal inequality and unequal ecological exchange on an international scale. By periodizing the main metabolic indicators, it will be determined whether they coincide with cycles of social mobilization with agricultural demands in the country, through the construction of historical series of the main protest repertoires. This will show whether conflict has indeed increased and to what extent it is related to increases in biomass extraction and its unequal distribution. Furthermore, at the identified turning points, an in-depth analysis of the causes of conflict will be conducted to determine whether these conjunctural moments of social unrest the unsustainability of this configuration. This, in turn, will help us better understand the role that social movements, in this case, peasants and indigenous organizations, can or do play in socio-environmental transitions, specifically in the industrialization of agriculture.