22 Apr Open access to special issue: Soy production in South America

The Journal of Peasant Studies has just published a new Special Issues: Soy production in South America: Globalization and New Agroindustrial Landscapes. The Guest editors are Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira and Susanna B. Hecht.
The entire collection (15 articles) is freely available for a limited time!
 
Summary of the Issue:

Soy in South America constitutes one of the most spectacular booms of agroindustrial commodity production in the world. It is the pinnacle of modernist agroindustrial practices, serving as a key nexus in food-feed-fuel production that underpins the agribusiness-conservationist discourse of “land sparing” through intensification. Yet soy production is implicated in multiple problems beyond deforestation, ranging from pesticide drift and contamination, social exclusion and conflicts in frontier zones, concentration of wealth and income among the largest landowners and corporations. This volume explores in depth the complex dynamics of soy production from its diverse social settings to its transnational connections, examining the politics of commodity and knowledge production, the role of the state, and the reach of corporate power in everyday life across soy landscapes in South America. Ultimately, the collection encourages us to search and struggle for agroecological alternatives through which we may overcome the pitfalls of this massive transnational capitalist agroindustry.