Routledge Agrarian Extractivism in Latin America (Routledge Critical Development Studies)

Amid the growing calls for a turn towards sustainable agriculture, this book puts forth and discusses the concept of agrarian extractivism to help us identify and expose the predatory extractivist features of dominant agricultural development models. The concept goes beyond the more apparent features of monocultures and raw material exports to examine the inherent logic and underlying workings of a model based on the appropriation of an ever-growing range of commodified and non-commodified human and non-human nature in an extractivist fashion. Such a process erodes the autonomy of resourcedependent working people, dispossesses the rural poor, exhausts and expropriates nature, and concentrates value in a few hands as a result of the unquenchable drive for profit by big business. In many instances, such extractivist dynamics are subsidized and/or directly supported by the state, while also dependent on the unpaid, productive, and reproductive labour of women, children, and elders, exacerbating unequal class, gender, and generational relations. Rather than a one-size-fits-all definition of agrarian extractivism, this collection points to the diversity of extractivist features of corporate-led, external-input-dependent plantation agriculture across distinct socio-ecological formations in Latin America. This timely challenge to the destructive dominant models of agricultural development will interest scholars, activists, researchers, and students from across the fields of critical development studies, rural studies, environmental and sustainability studies, and Latin American studies, among others. Review "This is a brilliant, ground-breaking book on extractivism, one of the world’s most important development issues today. It is a must read for everyone who aspires for social justice and sustainable development." - Saturnino M. Borras Jr., professor of Agrarian Studies, International Institute of Social Studies, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies and co-author of The Politics of Transnational Agrarian Movements. "This is an urgent and necessary book that exposes the way contemporary agriculture is organized by examining the central pillars that define the logic of capital accumulation in the production of agro-food commodities, on both the material and ideological-political levels. It offers theoretical depth and historical specificity to the concept ‘extractivism’ – a concept whose power is also played out in the struggles that peasant movements and socio-environmental organizations are leading throughout the world." - Carla Gras, Senior Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina and coordinator of the Rural Studies and Globalization program at the Institute of Higher Social Studies, National University of San Martín (IDEAS-UNSAM). "Agrarian extractivism in Latin America thoroughly explores how green paradises, sustainable fields, or productive crops can lead to extractive processes when they are linked to edible monocultures (soy, pineapple, sugarcane, oil palms), global extraction chains (green fuels), expert and technical knowledge that increases production (transgenic seeds), and unequal notions of sustainable development (symmetric forests). Agrarian extractivism leads to daily dispossessions and socio-environmental and intersectional inequalities, by erasing local people's realities, and creating toxic landscapes and unlivable futures. The book encourages us to rethink the agrarian contexts in Latin America. It opens possibilities to discover local political actions around food sovereignty that can transform the current social and environmental crises into a plural and diverse perspectives centered on the autonomy of producing food interconnected with territories, nonhumans, humans and life itself." - Astrid Ulloa, Professor, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. "This is a brilliant, ground-breaking book on extractivism, one