Events

Sarah Hackfort is a participant of the 29th DVPW-Kongress der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft in the following panels:

• Participant of the panel discussion ‘Bioeconomy Politics and Policy in Times of Polycrisis’; Wednesday, 25.09.2024, 16:00-17:30
• Moderation of the panel discussion ‘Unravelling the Political Ecology of Technologies and Infrastructures (Part 1)’; Friday, 27.09.2024, 9:00-10:30 a.m.
• Moderation of the panel discussion ‘Unravelling the Political Ecology of Technologies and Infrastructures (Part 2)’; Friday, 27.09.2024, 14:00-15:30

Cornelius Heimstädt will give a talk on “Pitching sustainability: How entrepreneurs publicly enact a compatibility of the economy and the environment” at the EASST / 4S conference at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Abstract

As planetary crises intensify, entrepreneurs need to demonstrate that their startups are sustainable in order to attract investors, partners, and customers. However, commentators from academia and the wider public point to a tension between startups’ pursuit of profits and returns on the one hand, and a genuine commitment to the environment on the other—a criticism that many entrepreneurs are aware of. Given this situation, this article draws on science and technology studies (STS) and social studies of markets to examine how entrepreneurs present the sustainability of their ventures in the public arena, and how in doing so they enact the compatibility of the startup economy and the environment. I explore this question through video recordings of 45 pitches by agricultural technology startups at a major agricultural trade fair, supplemented by ethnographic observations on site and qualitative interviews with several participating entrepreneurs, organizers, and investors. The article’s inductive analysis identifies three core practices through which the analyzed pitches enact a compatibility of the economy and the environment, namely authentication (demonstrating motives for sustainability efforts that originate in agriculture), calculation (accounting for sustainability efforts with numbers), temporalization (situating sustainability efforts in time). As such, the study expands on debates about the relational role of pitches in processes of market-making.

Miriam Boyer and Carlos A. López Morales will give a presentation on “Understanding the links between social reproduction and technological structure: A social accounting matrix of milpa agriculture in the Huasteca Veracruzana, Mexico” at the ESEE Degrowth Conference in Pontevedra, Spain.

Abstract

This contribution departs from the premise that the definition and support of any transition from current practices to alternative futures requires a comprehensive understanding of production technologies, particularly with regards to the conditions of ecological sustainability and social reproduction. The focus on the social dimension of technologies has been present for some time in some disciplines. In particular, the representation of the technological structure of a society in input-output economics has been linked with income distribution and institutional analysis with the development of social accounting matrices (SAMs), such that the exploration of production technologies can go beyond the analysis of input requirements in the industrial network to include the generation and distribution of income and of others determinants of social reproduction. However, the development and application of social accounting matrices has been dominated historically by analyses at the national and regional scales.

This presentation reports on research constructing a social accounting matrix of a local economy to study the ways in which it articulates around a particular technological structure that structures the conditions for social reproduction. The local economy is constituted by four peasant communities dependent on small-scale, community-based Milpa agriculture that are located in the mountainous huasteca region of the Mexican State of Veracruz. The indigenous population in these communities faces several challenges ranging from high poverty, lack of economic opportunities, migration, and climate change. We investigate the extent to which traditional agriculture based on Milpa technology is able to guarantee the basic conditions of subsistence while articulating the communities beyond food production. We report on the results of a field study conducted in these communities to construct a social accounting matrix at the local level that describes the way in which small-scale agriculture contributes to the maintenance and reproduction of the local economy.

Methodologically, this exercise tests the possibilities of SAMs for expanding the analysis of production technologies to include social and institutional aspects that are excluded from traditional input-output analysis, while applying it to the local level. SAMs work both as an economic model (in this case, of income distribution) and as a database (depicting the circular flow of income), and we investigate on how their economy-wide scope and consistent methods can be of use for the understanding of the social implications of production technologies.

Abstract

This paper takes the concept of valorization (Inwertsetzung) proposed by Elmar Altvater (Altvater 1987) and expanded by Alvater and Mahnkopf (1999) to examine how carbon farming schemes valorize ecosystem services in novel ways. Originally developed to analyze the extraction of natural resources in “underdeveloped” regions of the globe such as Brazil in the 1980s, Altvater and Mahnkopf’s multi-step model offers a tool for analysis of the different steps involved in the valorization process of a natural resource from its “discovery”, its scientific description, and its definition as a valuable resource to its integration into the world market. In the case of carbon farming this involves the scientific understanding of carbon sequestration in soils and the measuring of carbon content and ends with the sale of CO2 certificates. The paper will introduce the steps of Altvater and Mahnkopf’s model and describe how they can serve as a lens to identify the steps along the valorization process. At the same time, the model’s origin as a tool to analyze more traditional extractivist activities, reveals the peculiarities of carbon farming (and by extension the valorization of other ecosystem services) as a business model that valorizes an ecosystem service without transferring any physically commodities.

Abstract

Our paper focuses on the intersection of climate and agrifood politics by analysing carbon farming (CF), a ‘new’ nature-based solution for carbon removal. While there has been quite some critical research on forests and mechanisms of REDD+, the emerging schemes for CF in agriculture have not yet received much attention. We approach CF from a political ecology perspective through empirical research on the underlying political and technological infrastructure in Germany and the European Union. We address the following questions: First, who is driving this development, which actors benefit from it? What are their strategies and practices? Second, what kinds of private markets, public schemes and technical infrastructures have already emerged around CF and what kinds of environmental narratives and discursive promises are being made? Finally, what can be said about forms of delay, deterrence, and obstruction as a consequence of CF? Or how could CF be a transformative solution? What are the prospects for ‘just’ CF, where policies and programs are beneficial for a socio-ecological transformation including farmers? Our preliminary research findings suggest that existing inequalities and power relations are reproduced in the context of CF initiatives. In agriculture, each of the largest input and machinery firms offers a CF program. Using digital farm management platforms, the companies are able to direct data flows about seeds, soil quality, and farming practices directly into their platforms. Using CF programs not only locks farmers into existing economic and technological ecosystems. It also allows the firms to generate revenue from the collected data streams. Moreover, companies rely on high technology and science to confer credibility and legitimacy and make CF possible. Promises of precision and accuracy are invoked by industry and policy, while in reality the potential of digital technologies used to measure, monitor, and verify actual carbon levels is limited.

Sarah Hackfort will chair the panel “Unravelling the Political Ecology of Technologies and Digitalization in the Agri-food System” at the POLLEN24 conference in Lund, Sweden.

Panel Description

Over the past decades, a convergence of multiple crises, including the 2007/08 food crisis and other socio-ecological crises, brought to the surface awareness of the fragility of the global food system and raised concerns regarding future access to food and its availability to feed the world’s growing population without exacerbating the negative
environmental impacts of current food production. New farming techniques, developed along the lines of technological innovations and the digitalisation of agriculture, currently occupy a growing place in the agriculture field. Described by some as the fourth agricultural revolution, these techniques are being promoted by a variety of actors as a solution to feed a growing global population with less (as well as more precise) and thus more sustainable use of inputs.

While some attention has been given to the digitalisation of agriculture in social science research including science and technology studies and critical food studies, the scholarship has so far given limited attention to the intersection between the material and discursive practices around technology, digitalisation, and innovation, and its intersection with the policies and discourses on environmental politics. Particularly lacking are historical studies on the digitalisation of agriculture, and whether or not this “revolution” and its environmental impacts are different from previous ones (such as the Green Revolution or the industrialisation of agriculture).

In this panel, we want to put forward the important insights that can be gained from adopting a political ecology perspective in addressing technological innovations and the digitalisation of agriculture, topics that have so far rarely been addressed from a political ecology perspective. We aim to bring together conceptual and empirical contributions from a variety of geographical areas. We invite abstract submissions that analyse the materiality and narratives of technological innovations and the digitalisation of agriculture as they relate to environmental politics, as well as historical analyses on these topics.