Inflammatory agriculture: Political ecologies of health and fertilizers in India

Abstract

Across India, many farmers contend that synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers do more than impact soils, but also lead to tasteless food crops and weakened bodies more susceptible to aches, pains, and diseases. Although these complaints, long-documented across South Asia, have been theorized as embodied critiques of development or as reflecting hybrid epistemologies, there has been strikingly little focus on the potential biophysical currents that may underpin these perceptions of fertilizer harm. This paper works to fill this gap, analyzing qualitative data collected from farmers in two remote eastern Indian districts using an “integrated” political ecology of health (PEH) framework that utilizes two main approaches to examine bodily materiality and health. In particular, the framework looks at the multi-scalar political economies, cultural forms of meaning-making, as well as the visceral, affective ways that respondents come to see synthetic fertilizers as the cause of barren lands, tasteless foods, and weakened bodies. The article then deploys a critical reading of bioscientific literature to interpret respondent narratives and zoom in onto potential bio-social mechanisms that may help illuminate claims of fertilizer harm in new ways. In particular, I present evidence around how phytochemicals—literally chemicals produced by plants—may shift due to chemical fertilizer use in ways that may matter for hunger and health. Yet, not losing sight of the affective ways crops are grown, consumed, and discussed, I also highlight research examining how beliefs and perceptions measurably modify physiological responses to food in positive or adverse ways through the still ill-understood placebo/nocebo effect. The goal of such analysis is not to present a tidy conclusion to questions of fertilizer–health connections but demonstrate how a PEH that remains attentive to power, discourse, and materiality can bring disparate streams of thought together to forge pathways for transdisciplinary research and practice.

Ecosystem Service-Based Approaches in Agricultural Policy Making

“…Part of the applied nitrogen fertiliser is lost as ammonia (NH3), nitrogen gases (N2 and NOx), contributing to environmental degradation. This has resulted in increased GHG emissions, particularly nitrous oxide, which has seen a significant rise in recent years (Nichols, 2022). In India, nitrogen fertilizer applications account for a substantial share of N2O emissions, with a 49% share in 2005 compared to 40% in 1985 (Garg et al, 2012).…”

“…Livestock, in particular, emit substantial amounts of methane during digestion, while fertilisers contribute to nitrous oxide emissions. Overall, agriculture accounts for 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions Numerous studies underscore the Ecosystem Dis-Services (EDS) resulting from land use changes and green revolution technologies, including the negative impacts of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation, and mechanization (Gulati and Banerjee, 2015;Shukla et al, 2022;Nichols, 2022;Devi et al, 2022;Padhee and Whitbread, 2022;Bhattarai, 2021). The short-term and long-term ecological and human health consequences of chemical pesticides are well-documented globally, as discussed in the work by Devi (2022).…”

Dear food: Yuca’s relational role in sustaining precarious populations in Ecuador

“…The epistemological character of yuca cultivation research in Manabí relegates embodied yuca cultivation practices that constitute women’s caring for subsistence crops as unimportant. In the context of Manabita’s economic dependence on changeable cash crops and labor markets, this has led both to their lands’ increased biophysical dependence on agricultural inputs, as well as to a parallel increased vulnerability for its rural populations, that is, ‘a broader loss of control over their life and their livelihood’ (Nichols, 2023: 13).…”