The blood of heroes: Nationalist bodies, National soils, and the scientific conservation of the Federation of Colombian Coffee-Growers (1927–1946)

Abstract

This paper explores the scientific research and management programs of Colombia's Federation of Colombian Coffee-Growers (FEDECAFE) as part of a campaign to ensure the long-term viability of the nation's largest and most prominent export crop in the 1930s and early 1940s. Their work served a constituency of largely peasant small-holders in a period of increased erosion and declining coffee yields. Drawing on the organization's internal records and popular publications, this research shows how new ideas about human and ecological natures were an essential component of FedeCafé hegemony, conceptually embedding the vitality of Colombian nationhood and citizenship in coffee country's ecological systems. Further, this conceptual reembedding of society in ecological processes was itself the result of concerted challenges to new forms of land and labor exploitation that accompanied the global capitalist commodity booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.This earth that you cultivate, to which you are bound by need and by love -like an infant at its mother's breast -is tired; it is exhausted; it is dying in your hands, victim of an unrelenting enemy called erosion. And you aren't alone in depending on this land; we all depend on it. The soil is the most precious material resource of the nation, and you, amigo campesino, are its steward and guardian. The subsistence of you and your family depends on the fertility of the soil you cultivate, as does the prosperity of your country and the security of the nation.

Exploring social-ecological systems in the transition from war to peace: A scenario-based approach to forecasting the post-conflict landscape in a Colombian region

“…The model obtained with the scenario approach provides new coordinates of the municipalities on the PCA plane describing the new possible landscape structure linked to socio-political changes. Due to the lack of current spatial LULC data we validated predictions for agricultural land cover against production in Tolima between 2007 and 2013, specifically for rice and coffee, two of the most significant crops in the region (Marchesi, 2015;Delerce et al, 2016;Andrade et al, 2016;Esquivel et al, 2018). This type of agricultural production variables reflects the dynamic and evolution of primary sector activities through their implicit relationship with land uses (Olschewski et al, 2006, Jha et al, 2014Tscharntke et al, 2015;Chirindra et al, 2017).…”

Caring for soil life in the Anthropocene: The role of attentiveness in more‐than‐human ethics

“…These inquiries interrogate the role that various knowledges play in soil conservation and management, but leave unexamined the dynamic, socially contingent constitution of soil matter (e.g., Dea & Scoones, ; de Bruyn & Abbey, ; Ingram, ; Klingen et al., ; Schneider et al., ). While there has been some foundational work in political ecology critiquing the politics of soil science as a particular way of structuring human–soil relations, and the role it plays in relations of domination (Blaikie, ; Blaikie & Brookfield, ; Engel‐Di Mauro, ; Marchesi, ), the ontological status of soils as a “natural thing” remains a relatively settled matter in the social sciences.…”