Agrarian Question as an Ecological Question in Latin America

The 21^st Century agri-food systems in Latin America face a multitude of interconnected, social challenges following from global capitalism’s economic dominance and political hegemony. The most pressing of these problems are the centralization of ownership in agribusiness corporations, the displacement of indigenous communities and peasants from their territories, the financialization of the agrarian economy, the exploitation of the rural proletariat and contract farmers, and the emergence of the “world farm” whose production decisions depend on large global value chains. These transformations to the social relations of production lead to the precarization and feminization of rural labor, the urbanization, and proletarianization of peasant communities, long and obscure supply chains, and an alarming deterioration in diets and nutrition, even when accounting for increases in agricultural productivity.

Scholarship critical of these trends argues that they also produce ecological challenges due to the Green Revolution’s agricultural practices. During the 20^th Century, to spread the Global North’s economic model, those practices privileged heavy machinery, synthetic fertilizers, monocropping, high yielding-hybrids, and chemical control of pests and pathogens. The 21^st Century adds to these practices the genetic modification of crops and livestock and the automation of machinery through GPS-guided tractors, converting agriculture more and more into laboratories of technified production and large-scale warehouses. In the case of GMOs, their use is linked to the intense use of chemical controls as cultivars are modified to be resilient to herbicides produced by transnational agrochemical companies, such as Monsanto-Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow Chemical, and DuPont. Such pesticide-GMO combinations have led to defoliation, and despite initial claims to the contrary, an increase in pesticide applications. In general, Green Revolution agricultural practices have led to increased carbon emissions, both from carbon released tilling the soil or clearing a forest and from the petrol-dependence of machinery. They have also led to an overaccumulation of nitrogen and phosphorous, a reduction of biodiversity, soil degradation and contamination of vital water sources. We, therefore, confront a system materially incapable of long-term healthy reproduction at the ecological and social level.

With the ecologically destructive consequences of capitalist intensive farming and the challenges rural social movements, analyses of the agrarian question in the 21st century are increasingly leaning towards an ecological perspective. As such, scholars have begun to reassess the role of ecology in the agrarian question, considering the socio-cultural, political-economic, cosmovision, geographical and biological diversity of Latin America. We call for papers that seek to answer the following broad questions: (1) How does making ecology central to the agrarian question in the 21st Century alter the contours for framing problems and solutions concerning Latin American agroecosystems? (2) Which resistance projects have emerged against ecological damage caused by agrarian capitalism and what are their forms of struggle and organization? (3) What are the technical, scientific and political challenges for agroecological transitions in Latin America?

We are interested in avoiding reductions to class or productivism, seeking a synthesis with intersectional and decolonial frameworks. Also, we want to bring into the dialogue eco-feminist, eco-territorial, eco-anarchist, and the heterodox Marxism communitarian turn. Further, the shift in political positions from productivist to ecological, from state-centric to commune-centric, from proletarian-centric to cross-class coalitions, represents important dynamics in participatory democracy that have arisen from the constant experimentation over the 20^th and 21^st Centuries against the (neo)colonial dominance of capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy.

Along with these contemporary frameworks from the social sciences, we are also interested in an agroecology perspective, emphasizing topics such as biological, cultural and physical control of pests and pathogens, building up organic matter in the soil, intercropping and integrated farming, water catchments, and biodiversity throughout the agroecosystem. Considering that LAP is not a Natural Science journal, articles should seek to center the social relations that bridge the ecological nexus. Articles can be submitted in English, Spanish and Portuguese, which may address but are not limited to the following:

• Articles that explore agricultural capitalism under Latin America’s neoliberal and/or neodevelopmentalist governments, considering extractivism and neoextractivism within the agrarian framework, the relation between transnational agro-companies, states and global institutions.
• Articles that analyze agri-food systems, considering the relations between production and consumption, their formal and informal workers, their economic chains and socio-ecological meanings.
• Articles that explore the relationship between food sovereignty and ecology in Latin America, its conceptualization, history, its relations with indigenous and peasant movements and anti-colonial struggles.
• Articles that examine rural workers’ history and social problems, including their urbanization and the politico-cultural tensions between urban and rural workers. Also, that explores the role and implication for the rural/landless wage workers, their movements and interests, labor conditions, feminization, organizational capacity, and their relation with environmental, peasants and indigenous organizations.
• Articles that analyze the challenges and contradictions of agroecological transitions, examining policies and developments in Latin America, from Zapatista territories banning pesticides to the Mayan milpa system, from Cuban peasant agroecological cooperatives to the sumak kawsay and buen vivir agrarian realities.
• Articles that examine diet-related illnesses and the links with societal transitions from diets made up of locally grown, raw, and minimally processed plant and animal-based foods to industrially processed foods, considering the relationship between health systems, pharmaceutical industries, and agro-capitalism interests.
• Articles that analyze educational and cultural strategies to (re)colonize and decolonize production paradigms and consuming practices, considering the Green Revolution versus the Agroecological path.
• Articles that open epistemological and ontological dialogue with diverse territorial strategies to decolonize agricultural practices in cultural, social, and technical terms.
• Articles focused on how Marxist and anarchist organizations utilize ecology to frame their agrarian questions, programs, and development.

SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS

To avoid duplication of content, please contact the issue editors to let them know of your interest in submitting and your proposed topic. We encourage submission as soon as possible, preferably by August 1, 2022, but this call will remain open as long as it is posted on the LAP web site.

Manuscripts should be no longer than 8,000 words of paginated, double-spaced 12 point text with 1 inch margins, including notes and references, using the LAP Style Guidelines available at www.latinamericanperspectives.com under the “Submit” tab where the review process is also described. Manuscripts should be consistent with the LAP Mission Statement available on the web site under the “About” tab.

Manucripts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If you do not write in English with near native fluency, please submit in your first language. LAP will translate manuscripts accepted in languages other than English. If you are not submitting in English, please indicate if you will have difficulty reading reviews and/or correspondence from the LAP office in English.

Please feel free to contact the issue editors with questions pertaining to the issue but

all manuscripts should be submitted directly to the LAP office, not to the issue editors. A manuscript is not considered submitted until it has been received by the LAP office. You should receive acknowledgment of receipt of your manuscript within a few days. If you do not receive an acknowledgment from LAP after one week, please send a follow-up inquiry to be sure your submission arrived.

E-mail Submissions: send to lap@ucr.edu

Subject Line: Author name – Manuscript for Agrarian Question issue

Please attach your manuscript as a Word Document (doc or docx)

Include: Abstract (100 words), 5 Keywords, and a separate cover page with short author affiliations (less than 130 words) and complete contact information (e-mail, postal address, telephone).

Postal correspondence may be sent to:

Managing Editor
Latin American Perspectives
P.O. Box 5703, Riverside
California 92517-5703

For an article with more than one author, provide contact information for all authors but designate one person as the Corresponding Author who will receive correspondence from the LAP office. If any contact information changes while your manuscript is under consideration, please send the updated information to LAP promptly.

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal. Authors should not submit a manuscript that has been previously published in English in identical or substantially similar form nor should they simultaneously submit it or a substantially similar manuscript to another journal in English. LAP will consider manuscripts that have been published in another language, usually with updating. Prior publication should be noted, along with the publication information.

Issue editor contact information: Andrew Smolski – arsmolsk@ncsu.edu