Agro-industry at the center: How do communities on the edge respond?

Abstract

First paragraph:

Alex Nading’s second book focuses primarily on the communities that surround a Central American sugarcane operation—yet it spans the local to the global with a masterful combination of participatory observation, archival research, and theoretical reflection. The Asociación Montelimar Benedición de Dios (AMBED) represents around 700 rural Nicaraguan people who identified as “workers, former workers, residents and members of the communities belonging to the Montelimar Sugar Mill” (p. x). The World Bank has massively funded extensions of the sugar mill operation. AMBED registered a complaint to the Bank’s Compliance Advisor/ Ombudsman (CAO) which set up negotiations with the company.  AMBED creatively brings “knowledge of the ground” to these negotiations for “life supports” for them­selves and their communities. Nading characterizes “life support systems” as always temporary, whether they be the agrochemicals, harvesting equipment and irrigation canals supporting sugar­cane, the hemodialysis machines supporting those with Chronic Kidney Disease of non-traditional origin (CKDnt) in the sugarcane zone, or “projects addressing the cris[e]s of the Anthropocene” (p. xiv). He concretizes the Rockefeller Founda­tion–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health’s empha­sis on the earth’s life-support systems for human health and well-being. He sensitively analyzes how people grapple with life support systems, from legal frameworks like the CAO to irriga­tion works, to pesticide application regimes, to state-sponsored social security programs, to occupational health measures, to dialysis treat­ment itself. . . . [He] suggests that a close look at what happens along the unstable edges where life support systems meet might provide insights into the possibilities and limitations of planetary health. (p. xiv) . . .