Abstract:The control over what Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero (2008) conceptualise as 'pluripotent' life has become an essential factor of capitalist agriculture; this occurs through the regulation of strategic genetic resources. We recognise this course as part of a larger project of neo-agro-colonialism, which takes place by controlling both biotechnology and territories as an expression of a fungible power, turning geopolitics into biopolitics and vice-versa. While assessing the power relations and manipulation of spatio-temporalities in the process of life fabrication, we discuss the mechanisms of control over 'pluripotent' life -genetically modified seeds and biopiracy through patentisation of traditional knowledges -which turns life into a commodified good. This is to say that the instrumental use of life fabrication within the rationale of globalised capital (re)creates post-colonial temporalities that legitimise (re)new(ed) colonial ties. We ascertain that it is the manipulation of life's temporality that allows capital to be (re)produced in the agricultural context of the molecular age.

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The Cerrado biome has been intentionally unregulated. For this reason we understand it as a space of (in)security, this has allowed for the implementation of an agribusiness complex that has resulted in the rapid expansion of the agricultural frontier at the cost of devastating its native landscape. Yet, the academic literature is lacking in a geopolitical appraisal of the biome. In this paper, we discuss the actor-networks present within the securitizing/desecuritizing dispute for space in the Cerrado, through a more-than-huma-geopolitics. For this we make use of the Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) as a way to contemplate both human and non-human actants. In order to present a historical construction of the Brazilian Cerrado as a space of security and (in)security; seeking to understand how different actor-networks strive to (de)securitize it as a means to establish agribusiness in the region. Thus arriving at the understanding that the contention to (re)frame the Cerrado articulates traditional and capitalist production with a plethora of non-humans, therefore, the agency of collectives of humans and non-humans involves a semiology and practices that stabilize or destabilize this collective.

This paper interprets the Metro Vancouver food localization movement, thorough the lens of the second generation of food sovereignty, with the objective of exploring its economic dimensions. First we promote a theoretical discussion of food sovereignty explaining that it started in a rural setting of the global south as a means to contest the international neoliberal trade system, and how it has adapted in the global north to incorporate consumers. We then discuss the contradictions between British Columbia’s and Metro Vancouver’s food systems. In sequence, we present the results from interviews of the movement’s stakeholders, offering a qualitative analysis. Our findings demonstrate that there are several economic consequences, identifying: i) farmer markets as currently the most significant channel for the commerce of local foods and how they have been responsible for (re)approximating food producers and consumers; also, ii) institutional markets as a next step that can represent a true democratization of good food.