Agrobiodiversity’s caring material practices as a symbolic frame for environmental governance in Colombia’s southern Tolima

Abstract

Agrobiodiversity scholarship broadly examines plant-human interactions in agricultural landscapes and often concerns the governance of seed resources. This article pivots attention away from agrobiodiversity as a set of governable genetic resources to examine how the relational aspects of agrobiodiversity come to symbolize a future vision of environmental governance. Tolima residents are between two significant socio-environmental events: the 2016 Peace Accord ending decades of violent conflict and the development of an irrigation megaproject. This context creates space in which to imagine future governance relations. Drawing insights from political ecology-informed environmental governance and feminist care ethics, I show how caring material practices around native seeds translate into a vision for governance. The symbolic frame of agrobiodiversity promotes an alternative ordering of human-environment relations than that of export-oriented production, which has recently increased in southern Tolima. Methods included 42 interviews, 60 household surveys, and participant observation throughout 12 months. Findings illustrate that the caring material practices of agrobiodiversity particularly in seed exchanges, home gardens, and kitchens become a symbolic frame for environmental governance in which access to land, food, and community cohesion are ensured and protected. This research makes two contributions to the literature of agrobiodiversity. First, drawing on feminist care ethics, I argue that the caring material practices of agrobiodiversity create ‘care-full’ human-environment connections, especially important in the post-conflict context. Second, findings suggest that agrobiodiversity is not simply a set of plant materials to be governed, but also can have a strong symbolic function as a frame for environmental governance.