Guest editors:
Alexis Aulagnier (Sciences Po, France; alexis.aulagnier@gmail.com)
Eve Fouilleux (CNRS, France, eve.fouilleux@cirad.fr)
Frédéric Goulet (CIRAD, France; frederic.goulet@cirad.fr)
Scope and contribution
Key-words: Agriculture ; pesticides ; alternatives ; politics ; technology ; science ; policy; industry; competition
Reducing the consumption of pesticides is one of the main challenges facing the transition towards more sustainable agrifood systems (Carvalho, 2006). Their negative impacts have been highlighted repeatedly, affecting human health (Evangelakaki, Karelakis and Galanopoulos 2020; Dereumeaux et al. 2020; Bajwa et Sandhu, 2014), biodiversity (Seibold et al., 2019) and natural resources (Pelosi et al., 2021). Scientific controversies regarding pesticides (McHenry, 2018), collective movements in rural areas (Arancibia 2013), as well as the growing reporting of pesticides related issues by the media, have increased the visibility of these problems during the last decade.
Removing pesticides have proved to be quite problematic however, as they are a crucial component of contemporary agricultural systems (Shattuck, 2021). An important bulk of literature has documented the various lock-in mechanisms that tend to impede pesticides to be challenged (Cowan and Gumby, 1996; Wilson and Tisdell, 2001; Vanloqueren and Baret, 2007). Despite these mechanisms, attempts and solutions targeted at removing pesticides or reducing their use do exist. Some authors analyze how farmers, activists, bureaucrats and scientists engage in organic agriculture, which per definition excludes the use of synthetic chemical inputs (Padel, 2001; Lamine, 2011; Fouilleux and Loconto, 2018). Other authors have focused on the development of integrated pest management as a dissenting scientific project (Kogan 1998; Lamine 2011). Other works explore the emergence of new ‘nature-based’ substitution products, often derived from biotechnologies (Goulet, 2021) – on the market of agricultural inputs (Kvakkestad et al. 2020), or the adoption of new technologies for precision spraying (Wachenheim et al., 2021). All of these works show that pesticides removal is an objective that can be attained through radically different levers and that these do not target the same lock-in points. Said differently, different technologies (Arthur, 1989) and/or niches (Kemp et al., 2001) may compete for offering solutions to remove pesticides while ensuring crop protection.
With this special issue, we aim to approach the various types of solutions proposed to reduce agricultural dependency on pesticides as plural and competing alternatives. Our core hypothesis is that pesticides reduction/removal initiatives are embedding contrasted visions regarding the future of agriculture, along with specific representations, values, imaginaries but also material cultures. Our goal is thus to explore the politics and sociotechnical processes that underlie such plurality and competition. These solutions can be at odds with each other, but for different reasons actors often hybridize them in their discourses and/or in their technical and social practices. Through this special issue, our goal is to explore and understand this diversity of solutions, the actors, networks and coalitions they involve, and the way they are justified, legitimized or challenged. Our goal is also to assess the changes resulting from these various processes.
We expect papers either analyzing the emergence of one specific type of solution for pesticide use reduction/removal and its implementation, or exploring the competition at stake among different types of options for pesticide reduction/removal. Such processes may take place in different fields (or at the crossroads among them), which might be studied individually or in interaction:
- Pesticides as public problems
- Public policies and policy instruments
- Agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS)
- Firms’ strategies and technologies
Critical dates:
• Full papers submission: 15th January 2022
• Publication of the special issue: September 2022
+Info en el archivo abajo: