When agrarian imaginaries touch uncertain grounds

Moving beyond paradigms in agroecological farmers’ visions of a desirable future in the Valle Inferior del Río Negro, Argentina

Bibliographic Data

ID24228308
AuthorsAnna-Maria Brunner (0000-0002-0668-8753)
Year2026
Volume43
Issue2
Publication date2026-03-18
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAgriculture and Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0889-048X • E-ISSN: 1572-8366
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10460-026-10863-z
OpenAlexW7139017597
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited109

The rising number of people affected by hunger and the climate crisis underscore the urgent need to reimagine agricultural systems for sustainability. However, debates among scholars and politicians on agrarian futures often polarize into two imaginaries: the ‘conventional,’ driven by technological productivism, and the ‘alternative’, emphasizing low-input approaches such as agroecological farming. Farmers’ visions of agrarian futures remain underexplored, particularly those of agroecological farmers, as they are often essentialized as embodying ‘pure’ alternative imaginaries based on their self-identification. This study, based on long-term participatory research in the Valle Inferior del Río Negro, Argentina, explores how agroecological farmers navigate between the dominant conventional and alternative farming paradigms. Using a multi-method approach, including visual and creative tools, the research reveals that farmers’ future agrarian imaginaries are anchored in the coexistence of conventional and agroecological farming at various scales. Informed by a de-/postcolonial Political Ecology lens, this study highlights the power-related, material, and discursive factors shaping these pragmatic imaginaries and calls for a more context-sensitive, epistemically critical approach to researching future agrarian imaginaries, moving beyond paradigm-thinking.

agroecological production · conventional farming · low-input agriculture · paradigm critique · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Latin American rural development · Rural Development and Agriculture

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Open DOIOpen Access