Research project Unequal exchange and agrofood globalization: nitrogen, soybeans and Latin America
There is scientific consensus on the significant alteration of the nitrogen cycle from local to global scales caused by human activities.
Since nitrogen (N) is a vital nutrient for plant growth, agricultural production is the largest source of anthropogenic N (de Vries et al 2013; Fowler et al 2015). In fact, human activity contributes three times as much N to terrestrial ecosystems as all natural ecological processes combined (Galloway et al 2014). The excessive N presence in the nitrogen cycle has colossal negative consequences: eutrophication of ecosystems, acidification of soils and freshwater, substantial greenhouse gas potency, air pollution and stratospheric ozone depletion (de Vries et al 2013). Historically, humans have cultivated legumes to mobilize N from its non-reactive form or have accessed it through animal manure, guano and nitrate salts. However, the development of the Haber-Bosch method in early 1900 circumvents the need for these sources by manufacturing synthetic N fertilizer. This technology has radically increased the availability of N and enabled the exponential intensification of agricultural production around the world.
Project description
There is scientific consensus on the significant alteration of the nitrogen cycle from local to global scales caused by human activities. Since nitrogen (N) is a vital nutrient for plant growth, agricultural production is the largest source of anthropogenic N (de Vries et al 2013; Fowler et al 2015). In fact, human activity contributes three times as much N to terrestrial ecosystems as all natural ecological processes combined (Galloway et al 2014). The excessive N presence in the nitrogen cycle has colossal negative consequences: eutrophication of ecosystems, acidification of soils and freshwater, substantial greenhouse gas potency, air pollution and stratospheric ozone depletion (de Vries et al 2013). Historically, humans have cultivated legumes to mobilize N from its non-reactive form or have accessed it through animal manure, guano and nitrate salts. However, the development of the Haber-Bosch method in early 1900 circumvents the need for these sources by manufacturing synthetic N fertilizer. This technology has radically increased the availability of N and enabled the exponential intensification of agricultural production around the world.
How agricultural production can meet the needs of 10 billion people by 2050 without further alteration of the global nitrogen cycle poses one of the most pressing challenges facing human development (Bodirsky et al 2014; Galloway et al 2014). Since legume production e.g. soybeans is the largest anthropogenic input of N via biological fixation (i.e. not synthetic fertilizer) and has undergone dramatic intensification and growth due to its integral role as animal feed in modern livestock production (Baraibar Norberg 2020), it must be comprehensively examined alongside synthetic fertilizer. While synthetic fertilizer use in developed economies has stagnated since the 1980s, its use in developing countries has accelerated (Steffen et al 2015). No better example exists to explore future food system challenges than that of soybean production and trade in Latin America since the region produces the majority of the world’s soybeans (Baraibar Norberg 2020; Fowler et al 2015).
The coupled effects of synthetic fertilizer use and soybean production in the region have significantly contributed to the growing imbalance of the global nitrogen cycle (Pengue 2005). Yet, while there is burgeoning literature on the alteration of the global nitrogen cycle, as well as about soybean expansion in Latin America, there is a lack of research examining the historical development of the Latin American soybean commodity chain and how this has created the conditions for the current intensive mobilization, flow and loss of N globally. It is impossible to properly comprehend the contemporary global soybean chain, or the wider food system of which it is a part, without understanding its historical roots. Moreover, few studies of the Latin American soybean commodity chain have conceptualized it as a social-ecological system and simultaneously examined local social-ecological impacts on the most vulnerable stakeholders of these processes. This project aims to analyse historical developments, social-ecological processes, and experiences of stakeholders to gain in-depth understanding of global agrofood capitalism, anthropogenic effects on the global nitrogen cycle and ecologically unequal exchange.
FIELD OF STUDY
The distal connections between intensive agricultural production systems in the global South and consumers in the global North are facilitated by globalization (Krausmann & Langthaler 2019); characterized as the deregulation of trade, the reduction of state influence and an international division of labor (Eisenmenger & Giljum 2007). However, the social-ecological impacts of the production and international trade of agricultural commodities are not equally distributed. Because current processes of globalization involve unequal political-economic power relations, an ecologically unequal exchange takes place in which the most extractive and damaging activities are dislocated far away from the core economies (ibid.). Thus, the burden of negative social-ecological impacts of the global nitrogen cycle imbalance falls most heavily on those that are most vulnerable, i.e. the inhabitants of the global South (Givens et al 2019). For example, present expansion of agricultural lands over natural ecosystems are driven by global food demands, but mainly occur in resource-rich countries in the global South (Pengue 2005; Sly 2017). The enlarged distance of international agrofood trade obscures feedbacks of local social-ecological impacts (Crona et al 2016). The impacts of production appear in anonymous places far away from consumption. This allows investors to make profits whilst risks and costs are transferred to geographically disparate locations and the future (McMichael 2009). One illustration of this mechanism is that per capita consumption of natural resources is five times larger in high-income countries than in low-income countries, but it is mainly the ecosystems of low-income countries that are degrading fastest (Lenzen et al 2012). In this context, the grasslands and tropical forests of Latin America are rapidly disappearing as they are converted into pastures and soybeans for livestock feed and meat that are destined as exports. Thus, as transnational agribusiness firms convert millions of hectares of forests, savannahs and wetlands into agricultural lands, the capacity of ecosystems to provide vital ecosystem functions and services is diminishing in low-income countries, e.g. since 1970, biodiversity in low-income countries has fallen by 58 percent, while it rose by 10 percent in rich countries (Lenzen et al 2012).
The global nitrogen cycle imbalance represents an ecological rift between human societies and ecological systems (Bellamy Foster et al 2010). The concept builds on the Marxian notion of an increasing division between urban and rural areas and the resulting disruption in the nutrient cycle through the loss of social-ecological feedback associated with the spread of capitalism. Anthropogenic mobilization of N through the production of legumes and creation of synthetic fertilizers, currently outpaces ecological sources of denitrification: the conversion of N back to its non-reactive form. Instead, facilitated through international agrofood trade, N is embedded within local agroecosystems in the global South and traded for consumption in the global North; the local net loss of N and failure to denitrify it is a critical loss of ecological feedback within the global biosphere (Austin 2010; Krausmann & Langthaler 219). The cross-scale mobilization, flow, and loss of N within social-ecological systems (SES) that causes environmental degradation is termed the “nitrogen cascade” (Galloway et al 2003). While it seems clear that the current agrofood system involves some ecologically unequal exchange (EUE), we also know there is a huge variation locally in the way this manifests through the national export structure and 'true' ecological costs of commodities. Thus, it is necessary to empirically investigate exactly how the exchange is articulated across scales for specific commodities.
INSIGHTS FROM POLITICAL ECOLOGY, RESILIENCE THINKING AND ANTHROPOLOGY
This project will merge historically informed insights from within the traditions of political ecology, world systems theory, complex adaptive systems theory and anthropology. Thus this project crosses disciplinary boundaries to produce a holistic and critical analysis of the Latin American soybean commodity chain (LASCC). This framework comes with the theoretical assumptions that human societies and ecological systems are entangled in a much larger, complex SES where the system experiences both ecological and social feedbacks. Embedded in the SES are disproportionate power relations. The global nitrogen cycle imbalance and EUE are symptoms of these power relations. In terms of trade, complexity within the system obfuscates social-ecological impacts at the local level that are not reflected in the market price of commodities.
Essential to this research is an investigation of historical processes that have developed and transformed the LASCC. To accomplish this, periods of exponential anthropogenic N mobilization will be situated in food regimes and global commodity chain (GCC) analysis. A comprehensive mapping of SES dynamics including key feedback processes and variables/actors in the LASCC will be generated using Resilience Thinking (RT) (Biggs et al 2015) and the rich political-economic literature on the modern soybean commodity chain within Latin America (Austin 2010; Baraibar Norberg 2020; Pengue 2005; Sly 2017). Causal loop diagrams will be instrumental in discerning these dynamics. The benefits of using this well-studied commodity chain is that it describes the relations between local, national and transnational actors as well as how and where soybeans are produced and consumed. The analytical focus of this comprehensive mapping will be on slow variables and feedback, connectivity, diversity and scalar interactions (Biggs et al 2015). Despite the integration of these approaches being unconventional, they are rooted in traditions that view relations within systems as non-linear, non-deterministic and entail an interdisciplinary approach.
In order to examine the current N cascade within the LASCC and how this contributes to the growing imbalance of the global nitrogen cycle, a regional systems diagram will be generated. Soybean production increases the imbalance of the global nitrogen cycle through both biological fixation of N and the use of synthetic fertilizers. Thus, a Nitrogen Footprint (NF) will be calculated. NFs, a type of ecological footprint, are bottom-up methods based on physical flows of nitrogen that have been used in both the social and natural sciences to calculate how much N is released into the environment (Galloway et al 2014). Use of an LASCC NF answers scholars’ calls for political-economic research to integrate ecological aspects (Bair 2009; Eisenmenger and Giljum 2007; Givens et al 2019; Hornborg 1998).
The calculation of the NF is also essential to the methodological development undertaken in this research. As NFs measure sociometabolic flows and not social-ecological impacts, it will be necessary to complement this with another material flow analysis that can provide more fine grain data of impacts caused by the nitrogen cascade within the LASCC. This is because the complexity and inequities of power is further exacerbated by masking, diluting and drowning out mechanisms found within global commodity chains (Crona et al 2016). At the level of local production systems, the masking of social-ecological impacts occurs as they are often externalities to operating costs,. Dilution of the signals coming from local production systems can also occur at aggregated scales through the substitution of one production system for another (Crona et al 2016). Through dilution those at the end of the commodity chain, typically in the global North, are alienated from local social-ecological impacts occurring as a result of production. Drowning out of these signals results from market price alterations that can originate in e.g. government subsidization, wholesaler markdown or the vertical concentration of supply chain actors (ibid). Linking production, consumption and environmental stressors within and across countries can potentially help in illuminating how EUE occurs by showing the ‘true' ecological costs involved (Haberl et al 2019; Givens et al 2019).
Previous EUE, GCC and RT studies tend to approach social-ecological inequalities from a macro-level perspective, but we argue that a nuanced and holistic understanding is required to consider the macro-micro linkages. Furthermore, despite RT being an illuminating approach to understanding system dynamics within global commodity chains, it is critiqued as understating social diversity within aggregated institutions, lacking attention to values and power and promoting ecological reductionism (Fabinyi et al 2014; Hornborg 2013; Peterson 2000). To address these shortcomings, we suggest that the theoretical and methodological integration of RT, political ecology and anthropology is necessary. Thus, we will complement this study with ethnographic studies.
Ethnography as a critical anthropological tool is well-equipped to integrate world systems theory, complex adaptive systems theory and political ecology (Burawoy 2000; Fabinyi et al 2014; Hornborg 1998) because of the bottom-up approach taken to discover relations between the local and the global (Montsion 2018). In this way, ethnography gives “a privileged insight into the lived experience of globalization” (Buroway 2000:4). Conducting fieldwork can facilitate this because it can “challenge and extend social theory to provide clarity about the importance of complexity in social processes, including path dependencies and unintended effects'' (Gellert & Shefner 2009:195). Through observation and semi-structured interviews, ethnography can uncover the degree exogenous pressures determine the experiences and realities of vulnerable groups. Conducting ethnographic studies with several local small-scale farmers from different countries will provide a holistic view of the global-local connections (Buroway 2000; Montsion 2018). Despite existing in disparate locations with contextual histories, these local farmers are connected through their participation within the LASCC. In essence, they share a common vulnerability to the processes embedded within the LASCC, but are also formative of these processes.
This research further develops theory by integrating critical perspectives from political ecology such as GCC and EUE with the complex adaptive systems theory field of RT. Critics have claimed that the nomothetic and apolitical stance of RT maintains a business-as-usual approach to social-ecological issues (Hornborg 2013), while political ecologists claim to address these issues through an idiographic and power-oriented approach; though studies in political ecology are criticized for lacking ecological breadth and depth (Peterson 2000). However, rather than finding these two approaches mutually exclusive, this research serves to reproach the two fields and show that they are complementary. In addition, this study further develops methods to examine sustainable development through EUE, GCC and RT by integrating ethnographic methods. This can provide constructed meanings, lifestories and experiences of vulnerable stakeholders to theoretical approaches that tend to exist within macro-level, international and aggregated relations (Buroway 2000). Moreover, as traditional ways of reporting commodity trade do not account for any eventual EUE, the combined theories will contribute as a starting point for the development of new methods that more fully illuminate ‘true’ costs.
1) HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
This study will empirically depict the historical processes that led to the development of the LASCC and how this was facilitated as a result of neoliberal globalization of international agrofood trade. We will examine from the 1850s until recent years. This timeline is informed by exploring the linkages and congruence of food regimes, different periods of anthropogenic N mobilization and intensity and the history of soybean production in Latin America. We will investigate the shift in Latin America’s agricultural production systems to accommodate soybean production and how national policy, financing schemes and technology created conditions for the current social-ecologically disruptive system to emerge.
2) A SES PERSPECTIVE OF THE NITROGEN CASCADE
This part of the study aims to conceptualize the LASCC as a SES and calculate a NF to identify the social-ecological dynamics of the nitrogen cascade with the LASCC, including the feedback loops that reinforce them or are missing. This is calculated by measuring the production and consumption of soybeans for each country, and is expressed as the reactive nitrogen loss per capita per year. However, this only reveals how much N is released into the environment. Using the NF, literature and other secondary sources will inform which complementary material flow analysis will be best suited for the analysis of social-ecological impacts within the LASCC and highlighting instances of EUE.
3) ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS
The focus of this analysis will be on how local small-scale farmers are affected by the nitrogen cascade within the LASCC. Ethnographic studies focus on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay where the majority of soybeans are produced. Field observations of on-farm activities and environmental conditions will be complemented by semi-structured interviews at the household level thereby creating a position of agency for small-scale farmers. An interview guide will be developed in order to facilitate structured and cohesive interactions, while allowing flexibility and stream-of-thought. The data collected will be qualitatively analyzed using a deductive thematic analysis that will seek to elucidate how EUE is manifested through the local social-ecological impacts of the nitrogen cascade on small-scale farmers. Depending on demography, extent of soybean production and severity of impact, time spent in each location will vary as will sample-size.
Project members
Project managers
Matilda Baraibar
Forskare
Members
Enrique Antonio Mejia
PhD Student
Lisa Deutsch
Universitetslektor
