This paper takes as a starting point an outbreak of fall armyworm, an invasive moth species, on the African continent. A typical ‘feral proliferation,’ one would expect such an outbreak and its most destructive impact to take place in large-scale monocultures. Yet fall armyworm has had the most negative effects on smallholder farmers. What does this tell us about the current scales of subsistence economies and ecologies? I argue that smallholder farmers in Western Kenya cultivate a form of partial plantations, farms with simplified ecologies and intensified agricultural methods without the economy of scale that create profits, or protection from unwanted companions. I will explore two main implications: firstly, in relation to the theorisation of plantations, showing that not only are ‘plots’ vital to the continuation of the plantation, but that in this context plantation logics also flow into the plot. Secondly, growing awareness of the toxic effects of pesticides in the US and EU play into agrochemical companies’ access to new ‘frontier markets,’ such as those on the African continent. The partial plantation condition reveals a fundamental tension between the scaling-up of agricultural production and the increasing awareness of the harms of chemical-intensive methods that small-scale farmers navigate.
Bio
Miriam Waltz is an assistant professor at Leiden University, with a joint appointment between the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and the African Studies Centre. Her research interests center around questions of health and environment. She is currently part of two projects: LUNHA (Leiden University Network for Health in Africa), and Tracing Pollution, which explores multimodal methods to make visible experiences and dilemmas of living with toxic substances.
