The Global Pesticide Complex: Agrochemical Capital, Regulation, and Agrarian Change

The Global Pesticide Complex: Agrochemical Capital, Regulation, and Agrarian Change

Call for a Special Issue of the Journal of Agrarian Change

Guest-Editors: Kees Jansen, Nathalie Jas, Jessie Luna, Marion Werner

Click here to download a PDF version of the call

 

Invitation

We invite scholars to contribute to a special issue on the Global Pesticide Complex. The rationale and possible topics are described below. If you are interested in contributing to this special issue, please contact one of the guest-editors (email addresses below).

Rationale

Recent scholarship on the agrochemical sector has identified significant transformations: from the industry’s eastward production shift and consolidation among top-tier firms, to protracted pest and weed resistance, to public concern over the safety of newer-generation compounds, and more. This special issue will bring together critical scholarship on pesticides loosely organized around the notion of the global pesticide complex (Galt 2008, Mansfield et al. 2023). The term reflects growing interest in examining pesticides and their effects beyond the farm. The global pesticide complex highlights the compounding interactions between a range of multiscalar factors, including shifting economic geographies of the agrochemical industry, scientific developments, evolving regulation and state and international action, knowledge struggles around risk, shifting agricultural practices and technologies, and the reproduction or transformation of social hierarchies of class, gender, race, and more through pesticide-enabled agrarian change.

We identify five significant shifts in analytical perspective that should inform contributions to the special issue in whole or in part:

1) A shift from pesticides to the global pesticide complex. Much scholarly work has focused on pesticides rather than the interactions among farmers, off-farm capital, (including agrochemical and agricultural commodities industries), science, and regulators. Four bodies of extant work may be identified. The first deals with the scientific, technical, socio-economic and political dynamics that lead to the introduction of pesticides, to the intensification of their use or, on the contrary, to shifts towards non-chemical alternatives (e.g., Wright 1990, Dowdall & Koltz 2014, Guthman 2019, Luna 2020). The second discusses the regulation of pesticides, in particular their toxicity and associated controversies (e.g., Boardman 1986, Pallemaerts 2003, Jansen 2017, Kinniburgh 2023). The third covers activism against pesticides (e.g., Dunlap 1981, Arancibia & Motta 2018, Nikol & Jansen 2020). The fourth, and probably largest body of literature, is concerned with the perceptions of pesticide users; for example, of the risks of pesticides or the sources of information about pesticides and their effects. Some of this literature has specifically focussed on the victims of acute or chronic pesticide exposures. Recently more attention has been paid to the experience of farmers and farmworkers (e.g., Lekei et al. 2014, Gamblin 2016, Saxton 2021). Although these bodies of work make important contributions to our knowledge about specific branches of industry and the pesticide-based agricultural production model, they do not always offer a more systematic analysis of the pesticide industry and its linkages with other actors, leaving the question of how reconfigurations of pesticide capital interact with and transform economy and society largely unresolved.

2) A shift in research departure point from the global North to China, India, and the global South. The contemporary global pesticide complex reflects rapid globalization of the industry through institutional and geographical transformations. Well-documented corporate consolidation of top-tier R&D firms headquartered in the US, the EU and China has been accompanied by a less-documented emergence of billion-dollar-plus agrobusiness multinationals focused on the booming generics market (Werner et al. 2022). These restructured supply chains are marked primarily by the outsized role played by Chinese (and increasingly Indian) manufacturers, and a disaggregation of the value chain where active ingredients may be produced in one location for formulation in numerous plants globally. Thus, we propose both a methodological and theoretical shift in the starting point for research. We seek research that starts in the places where the most dynamic change is occurring: where capital expands and transforms the local economy and the making of regulation. From there, researchers can follow the multiple threads that together construct the tight knot of pervasive and emerging powers of the global pesticide industry at various levels. Theoretically, this shift in departure point foregrounds the political-economic reordering of uneven development. Analysis of transformations, diversification strategies, and innovations from the leading multinational companies that produce composite agricultural inputs (pesticides, biopesticides, GM seeds, big data) should be made in light of shifting market, geopolitical and social dimensions. These include the east- and southward shift of the production of pesticides over the last two decades, new East-South relationships in pesticide production and trade reflecting new dimensions of opportunity and dependency, the rapid expansion of pesticide-based agriculture in Africa and parts of Asia, the development of local and multinational generics companies along with informal pesticide sectors, and the building of pesticide regulation in countries with modest resources for these activities.

3) A shift from ascribing power to a singular pesticide industry to analyzing layered and multiple forms of power at multiple scales and in a range of institutions. Pesticide-critical studies and social movements often make observations about the dominant, powerful position of legacy companies in the conventional agricultural system. Their focus is generally on consolidated corporate power, centered in the US and Western Europe, wielded over an industry-friendly state that facilitates regulations, international trade, and development programs in the corporate interest. Scholarly work, along with investigative journalism, has clearly demonstrated strategies developed by the industry to influence policy-making, trade rules, national regulations, scientific research, and farming practices (Foucart 2019). Much of this work, however, presumes both a stable industry structure and a clear market/state divide. Largely underresearched are the multiple ways that power is produced and reproduced, or, in short, how power is made to work across a range of institutions and scales (Wright 1990,  Agneli Aguiton et al. 2021). Agri-food conglomerates in the US and the EU have faced stiff challenges from state-owned and private capitals in emerging markets, at times consolidated into what Alami and Dixon call state-capital hybrids (2023). While the relationship between generic and R&D firms often remains one where the latter control key technologies and data (Jansen 2017), capitals formed through the booming generics industry have gained influence (Shattuck 2021). Mechanisms range from company acquisitions (e.g., ChemChina’s aquisition of Adama in 2011, Syngenta in 2018, and its merger with SinoChem in 2021), product or portfolio investments, and lobbying in international fora like the FAO (Belesky & Lawrence 2018). States are taking on renewed interest in regulating the agri-food system more broadly, adopting different roles as well as mercantilist policies depending on the context (Pritchard et al. 2016). State and regional (e.g., the EU, CEDEAO) institutions themselves are dense terrains of struggle over how pesticides are regulated, how their use is documented, and what scientific evidence can be mobilized in government decision-making (Foucart 2019, Castro-Vargas & Werner 2022, Demortain 2024). We seek scholarship that traces these multiple and shifting paths of power to better grasp how the dynamics of the global pesticide complex materialize in different national, regional, and global contexts. This exploration goes beyond legacy firms to analyze cooperation and competition among distinct capital sources, within multilateral forums, traditional trade disputes, public and private standards, international trade agreements like SPS, and international conventions such as Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm, which form the foundation of global pesticide regulatory regimes.

4) A shift towards a more precise understanding of the interactions between corporate strategies and ‘sustainable development’. The pesticide industry has long developed strategies in line with sustainable development discourses, positioning itself overall as an agent of modernization (Fouilleux & Goulet 2012). Critics of the industry have found these moves to be little more than corporate greenwashing. We can observe two contradictory tendencies in the present. On the one hand, agrochemical firms increasingly promise reduced chemical loads and solutions to pest and weed resistance through novel technologies like artificial intelligence, precision agriculture, new gene-editing techniques for seeds, and low-dose formulations. On the other hand, chemical loads are clearly increasing (FAO 2023), while new technologies such as stacked-trait herbicide-tolerant seeds are intensifying chemical use. The connections between pesticides and other contaminants, such as nanomaterials, heavy metals, plastics or PFAS, also require consideration. Pesticide companies differ in their strategies towards producing green public relations narratives, developing profitable new products and markets (e.g. biocontrol), and influencing regulations and public policy. In some cases they push for more permissive regulation, while in others they accept more restriction (Jansen 2008). Taking the industry as a complex object, comprised of capitals with both competing and common interests and a vast array of entities (e.g. business associations, non governmental and philanthropic organizations, consultancy, lobbying, and law firms), how do we understand different industry factions’ contemporary responses to detrimental social, economic, environmental, and/or health effects of pesticides?  In light of the reciprocal and iterative interactions between industries, the state, and regulation in the global pesticide complex, how do various ways of producing knowledge about toxicity and contests over that knowledge shape industry discourses and practices? Conversely, how do industry discourses, practices, and their potentially conflicting interactions with other players involved in regulation and public policy, help to shape the production and mobilization of knowledge?

5) A shift towards more detailed understanding of how the transformation of the global pesticide complex interacts with agrarian change. Scholarly work has long shown that the intensification and industrialization of agriculture (or, on the contrary, the preservation and development of alternative forms of agriculture) are not simply a matter of technological choices, but also involve transformations that are often considerable and multifaceted. These transformations affect, among others, the ownership and transfer of land, class differentiation, the forms of collective organization of farmers, the organization of work and labour relations, relationships within farming families and communities, the organization of value and commodities chains, and national and international trade rules. Upstream and downstream industries thus have every interest in working actively to provoke, redirect, reinforce or counter certain agrarian change dynamics to the detriment of others. Thus, for example, actions carried out within the framework of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) initiated in 2006 by the Bill Gates Foundation have simultaneously sought to increase farm size, dispossess small farmers, re-orient land use, and intensify commercialization and the use of commercial inputs including pesticides (Park & Vercillo 2021). Similarly, deep economic and social transformations, such as urbanization, individualization of societies, disaffection with agriculture and farm labor shortages, can accelerate the adoption of pesticides at different scales (Luna 2020) and be exploited by industry players to strengthen their positions. These interactions between the recent and on-going transformations of the global pesticide complex and the promotion and development of certain forms of agrarian change have not been subject to much in-depth description and analysis. We are looking for empirically grounded scholarship that explores strategies developed by various players of the global pesticide complex to influence, adapt to, or utilize dynamics of agrarian change. We are interested in contributions that analyze the design of these strategies, the alliances on which they are based, their implementation, their effects, and the resistance they encounter. We are also interested in the feedback effects of these strategies on actors within the global pesticides complex and on the complex as a whole.

This special issue is open to submissions relevant to the field of (agrarian) political economy. Submissions can draw upon different theoretical backgrounds and be rooted in or cross different disciplinary domains (such as anthropology, economics, geography, law, political science, sociology, or STS). Contributions can incorporate a range of themes related to technology, economy, social action, regulation, and the role of science/knowledge, or focus on one or more of these. Contributions need not mobilize the global pesticide complex, but approaches should be commensurate with the general project that the term indicates.

Possible topics of individual papers include:

• The changing morphology of the pesticide industry (including merger and acquisition strategies, growth trajectories and competition, geography of pesticide production, distribution and markets).
• The related transformations of the pesticide industry resulting from new geographies of generics capital, ranging from local formulator firms to agribusiness multinationals. This could include, for example, analysis of informal distribution and retailing systems or of specific processes resulting from these transformations (e.g., uncontrolled expansion, business conflicts around regulation, or public policies to support generics industry development or innovation).
• Struggles around intellectual property rights (including emergent property rights such as data exclusivity, which is relevant for the risk data required for pesticide registration).
• The ways the pesticide industry currently influences the construction and implementation of regulatory frameworks (including its role in the evolution of risk science and risk management, responses to the actions of social movements, and harmonization and equivalence as contested issues).
• Effects of expansion of the global pesticide complex and specific pesticides on changes in relationships between farm and off-farm capital, land tenure, and labour relationships.
• Additional effects and consequences stemming from changing relationships between farm and off-farm capital, land tenure, and labour relationships.
• Interactions between pesticide industries and other corporate food chain actors in the maintenance of the chemicalized agriculture model.
• The construction of legitimizing discourses and shifts in industry strategies to spread them (including the role of propaganda, ghost writing of publications, constructing industry’s organic intellectuals, repression of critical voices, and so on).
• The strategies of industry towards new or still promising technological opportunities (biotechnology, digitalization, precision farming, new spraying equipment, seed-pesticide interaction, new biocontrol products, big data) in relation to broader socio-economic developments.
• The interactions between industry and science/knowledge in the public domain (either with regard to innovation, regulation, public policies, or legitimization).
• The material―political-economic interactions between ecological feedback loops, pest and weed resistance in particular, and new mixes of market demand and industry innovation (or lack of innovation).

Please, submit an abstract to kees.jansen@wur.nl or contact one of the guest‐editors to discuss you ideas as soon as possible, but in any case before 15 January 2025. Deadline for papers is 15 May 2025.

About the guest-editors

Kees Jansen is Associate Professor in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, editor of Agribusiness and Society: Corporate Responses to Environmentalism, Market Opportunities and Public Regulation (Zed) and author of publications on the pesticide industry and pesticide regulation in Global Environmental Politics, Development and Change, World Development, and the Journal of Contemporary Asia. Email: kees.jansen@wur.nl

Nathalie Jas is advanced researcher at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) in Montpellier, working in the field of History and Sociology of Science. She is co-author of Residues: Thinking through Chemical Environments (Rutgers University Press) and co-editor of Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945 (Routledge) and Pervasive Powers The Politics of Corporate Authority (Routledge), and author of many other articles and book chapters in French and English on toxicants. Email: nathalie.jas@inrae.fr

Jessie Luna is Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. Her research engages environmental sociology, political ecology, and sociologies of race, food, agriculture, and development. She has a forthcoming book focused on agricultural modernization through the lens of racial capitalism in Burkina Faso, and has published on pesticides, genetically modified crops, and agrarian change in Agriculture and Human Values, World Development, Environmental Sociology, and the Journal of Agrarian Change. Email:  jessie.luna@colostate.edu

Marion Werner is Professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY), working on the gender and racial politics of labour and the political economy of agri-food systems with a focus on pesticide industry restructuring. She is the author of Global Displacements: The making of uneven development in the Caribbean (Wiley, 2016). Her work on pesticides has been published in Global Environmental Change, Agriculture and Human Values, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Email: wernerm@buffalo.edu

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