Cultivating power, enacting consent. A critical review of ‘Seeds of power. Environmental injustice and genetically modified soybeans in Argentina’, (A. Leguizamón) 2020, Duke University Press, 221 p

• Published in: Review of agricultural, food and environmental studies Vol. 102; no. 4; pp. 441 - 447
• Main Author: Delvenne, Pierre
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Paris Springer Paris 01.12.2021; Springer Nature B.V; Springer
• Subjects: Agribusiness; Agricultural collectives; Agricultural Economics; Agricultural production; Agricultural sciences; Agriculture; Agriculture, economy and politics; Agrochemicals; Collective action; Consent; Courtyards; Crop production; Economic development; Economics; Economics and Finance; Environmental Economics; Environmental justice; Farms; Genetic modification; Genetics; Industrial development; Injustice; Kitchens; Life Sciences; Modernization; Neoliberalism; Peasants; Pesticide toxicity; Pesticides; Political economy; Politics; Power; Power structure; Review Essay; Rural areas; Rural development; Seeds; Social dynamics; Social systems; Soybeans; Wives; Women; Working class; Argentina
• DOI: 10.1007/s41130-021-00158-8
• ISSN: 2425-6870

In her recent book Seeds of Power, Amalia Leguizamón (2020) looks at the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) soybean in Argentina and makes a singular contribution to these debates by focusing not only on those who resist, but also on the many people who suffer the toxic impact of pesticides on their own bodies but choose not to engage in any form of collective action because they somehow benefit from this agricultural model. An original choice is made: the one to focus neither primarily on the powerful (CEOs of agribusinesses, soybean producers, state officials) nor on the powerless (such as indigenous peasants and working-class women, who due to their class, gender and/or race occupy the lower rungs of society), but on the range of actors “in between”, i.e. “rural folks of the Pampas who are of European descent and who indirectly reap some of the benefits of soybean production [even if they also bear the impact of agrochemical exposure]: they are the employees of agribusinesses, landowners who rent their land for others to farm, the wives of soybean producers, and other professionals and business owners who benefit from rural economic development but are not ‘in the farming business’” (p.6). According to Leguizamón, this reflects the fact that the emerging concerns raised more or less explicitly by the women “in the safety of kitchens and courtyards” (p.98) ultimately result in silencing, self-policing and denial of health and environmental injustices. In Chapter 4, Leguizamón broadens the spectrum of actors involved in synergies of power and considers the dynamics and collective social mobilizations, as well as their results, of “gendered and racialized subjects” who do not benefit at all from the soy model and who suffer harshly from its health and environmental consequences.