Book Review: Amalia Leguizamón - Seeds of Power

Amalia Leguizamón’s Seeds of Power documents the impact of the exponential spread of transgenic soybeans in Argentina’s Pampa and northern regions since their introduction in the country in the mid-1990s. Through a first-person narrative of her encounters with respondents in and around small towns of Buenos Aires province and Córdoba city, she skillfully unravels the story of how a specific farming technology embodying substantial health risks for agricultural workers, farmers, and neighboring inhabitants has nonetheless been accepted by a majority of Argentina’s population.

Her analysis focuses on the differentiated perceptions and responses to the health risks of glyphosate spraying, which has become dangerously pervasive due to the rapid spread of herbicide-resistant GM soy, the dominant crop presently covering over half of Argentina’s rural landscape. It homes in on the higher prevalence of cancer, miscarriages, birth malformations, and other illnesses noticed by women of different social strata who work and reside in areas where glyphosate spraying has become ubiquitous.

Gender is a central analytical lens through which the author tells this story. Given their role as primary caregivers and their consequently fine-grained empirical observation of their children’s health and well-being (compared to that of most fathers under prevailing patriarchal domestic labor attributions), the latter’s growing exposure to health risks associated with increased agrochemical use cannot go unnoticed. Yet the strata in the middle of the Argentine social pyramid - exemplified by the men and women the author engages within the book’s initial chapters – are either enthusiastic about transgenic biotechnology or simply acquiescent despite the health risks of pesticide drift.

Not surprisingly, the cracks in Argentina’s pro-GMO narrative are predominantly voiced by working-class women and peasant-indigenous communities, given that they suffer its costs much more directly. This is in marked contrast with members of the country’s economic and political elites who live in large urban centers, thousands of miles away from the transgenic crops whose benefits they publicly laud as they reap the bulk of the agro-commodity export rent.

Argentina’s middle strata have also benefited to some extent. As respondents revealed when pressed by the author, this is the main reason for their acquiescent attitude towards rampant herbicide-resistant GMO crop expansion and associated agrochemical use. Still, the middle-class women undertaking the gendered roles of mothering and caring cannot help observing the increasing cases of illnesses related to the pervasive spraying of glyphosate, sometimes at their very doorstep. However, this is merely mentioned in passing (and only in the absence of the interviewed men who unreservedly defend GM technology) during short windows when they feel sufficiently at ease to question some of the dominant paradigm’s tenets.

Leguizamón warns the reader at the beginning of the book that it is essentially a foray into the prevailing extractivist model, and that examining alternatives lies beyond its scope. However, her concluding reflections look at possible ways forward based on her observations of middle-class rural women and the experiences of working-class community organizations and social movements. Of particular interest is her framing of how women’s “experience of taking care of their loved ones, of gathering data constantly on their children” (146) is connected to alternative ways of knowing that prioritize long-term care and proximity versus the prevailing corporate model based on “short-term profitability and distance from the farm” (146). Such reflections provide important elements for an alternative ecofeminist conceptualization of rural development (Mies and Shiva, 1993; Zaremba et al., 2021; Trevilla et al., 2021).

Reflecting on interviewed urban peripheral working-class women and northern Argentine peasant-indigenous movements, the author correctly points to the need for interconnected popular mobilization and responsive state action through policies and regulations. Yet she ultimately considers that “for social change to occur, the most important thing states can do is to enact laws” (133). However, even examples provided by the author (e.g., law 26160 aimed at protecting peasants and indigenous peoples against forced evictions) show that passing legislation may be a necessary step, but state budgetary and enforcement capacities are equally essential for such laws to be effectively implemented.

Leguizamón’s book remains a bold effort and significant contribution that unveils the contradictions of the prevailing political-economic system and its hegemonic socially internalized cultural discourse. The acquiescent ambivalence of some and the active struggles of others are both symptoms of the deep-seated contradictions of this prevailing order. Further research is needed to understand how the broader working and middle classes and marginalized peoples within and across countries can be united in a wider common front to defend and support the implementation of alternative eco-socialist development paradigms (Hickel, 2023; Foster, 2022). Critical ethnographic inquiries of these different social strata, as provided by Leguizamón’s book, are precious parts of a broader puzzle in understanding how such fronts can be built and sustained.