Analyzing policy discourse for agroecological possibilities
A theoretical and methodological contribution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24228288 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lia R Kelinsky‐Jones (0000-0002-8259-1531), Colin Anderson (0000-0001-5447-3012) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Agriculture and Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0889-048X • E-ISSN: 1572-8366 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10460-026-10866-w |
| OpenAlex | W7133706656 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 57 |
With more organizations committing their policies to sustainable and inclusive agricultural development, it becomes important to understand the underlying meaning, politics, and intentions that underpin these policy goals. Agroecology offers a comprehensive agenda for transforming the food system toward more equitable, sustainable, and self-reliant communities. Food system development discourse appears to mediate agroecological possibilities, yet we lack methodological and theoretical approaches through which to evaluate this. With this research, we combined Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with a typology of agroecological discourse to analyze the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) policy on self-reliance. We tested this approach on the self-reliance policy framework because, depending on how self-reliance is discursively positioned, it can align with agroecological transformation. Findings reveal how the United States’ emphasis on inclusivity, locally driven agendas, and environmental concerns could be entry points for agroecology. However, through careful reading using CDA and the agroecological typology, our analysis reveals how USAID’s discourse suggests a highly problematic environment for supporting agroecology that forecloses on agroecology’s multifunctional outcomes by prioritizing market-led and technocratic development approaches. Our research contributes theoretically and methodologically by revealing how our unique approach could be extended to identify agroecological possibilities in seemingly aligned texts and to evaluate agroecological alignment in policy discourse that explicitly prioritizes agroecology.
Agroecology · Critical discourse analysis · development policy · food system equity · food system transformation · market-led development · policy discourse · Self reliance · sustainable agricultural development · USAID · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Cultural and political discourse analysis · Rural Development and Agriculture
Agroecology as a science, a movement and a practice. A review
Agroecology as a Transdisciplinary, Participatory, and Action-Oriented Approach
Critical discourse analysis
Discourse and social change
Symbolic purposes and factual consequences of the concepts “self‐reliance” and “dependency” in contemporary discourses on welfare
“Magic concepts” and Usaid
Cultural legitimacy and framing struggles in innovation journeys
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis
Analysing Discourse
The 10 Elements of Agroecology
Toward thick legitimacy
Human and social values in agroecology
The role of narratives in socio-technical transitions—Fukushima and the energy regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom
Complementing or co-opting? Applying an integrative framework to assess the transformative capacity of approaches that make use of the term agroecology
Can agroecology and CRISPR mix? The politics of complementarity and moving toward technology sovereignty
Grasping practices of self-reliance within alternative foodscapes in Flanders
Frames of self-reliance
Third World Foucault
We will not perish; we’re going to keep flourishing”
Theorizing diverse economies in the context of racial capitalism
Democratic Deservingness and Self-Reliance in Contemporary Myanmar
Framing
Democratizing Knowledge
Self-Reliance beyond Neoliberalism
Transforming food and agriculture
Framing Processes and Social Movements
Tilting the frame
| Highly cited | No |
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