Technology, nature’s appropriation and capital accumulation in modern agriculture

Published in Environmental Sustainability, 45, 1-9
Authors

Gras C., Cáceres D. M .
Publication year 2020
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.04.001
Affiliations
 Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and IDAES-Universidad de San Martín. Av. 25 de Mayo 1021, San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (FCA-UNC). Av. Valparaiso s/n, Ciudad Univesitaria, X5000, Córdoba, Argentina 
IAI Program
  • Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Técnica, Argentina, Grant/Award Number: PICT 2014/2017.
  • Universidad de Córdoba &ndash SECYT, Grant/Award Number 411/18, Argentina.
  • Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, Grant/Award Number: SGP-HW90.
IAI Project 1645887
Keywords
rural technology
precission agriculture
natures appropriation
capital accumulation

Abstract

Framed by efficiency and productivity narratives, technological innovations are conceived as the inexorable pathway to agricultural development, obscuring the associated appropriation of ecological surpluses and depletion of natural resources. In the past two decades, increasing food, energy and animal feed global demands, have hasted capitalization, pushing the exhaustion of ecosystems to new thresholds that compromise the ecological bases of capital accumulation. Likewise, the hegemonic technological-led path of development is confronted by political contestation and competing framings. Here we aim to understand how current technological innovations address the questioning of agriculture&rsquos sustainability. We are interested both on the solutions that are put forward to expand capital accumulation and on the narratives that allow to recast and legitimate actors and processes in industrial agriculture.