Political Ecology and Extractive Agriculture

 
 
 

I examine how extractive industries produce economic, environmental, and social impacts. I have researched the essential oil industry in Haiti and the pineapple industry in Costa Rica. I also do research with smallholding farmers practicing agroecology or alternative labor arrangements.  

Pineapple Plantations in Costa RIca

  • Costa Rica is the world's largest fresh pineapple exporter. Expanding pineapple plantations in southwest costa rica have brought forest loss, high pesticide use, and poor labor practices.

  • What made Costa Rica a location where fresh pineapple has flourished? How has pineapple cultivation impacted smallholding farmers in the region? 

  • I have lead masters students to conduct collaborative research projects with local farmers and activists who are trying to find alternatives and resist further expansion of pineapple and other extractive industry. I have also conducted archival research on the pineapple industry in Costa Rica and beyond.


  • Pineapple cultivation is the material result of the intersection of neocolonial banana cultivation, neoliberal trade policies, and laboratory research aimed at making pineapple a household commodity.


Essential oil industry in Haiti

  • Haiti is the worlds largest producer of vetiver oil, a valuable scent used in many perfumes and soaps. The essential oil industry produces an incredible amount of wealth for foreign perfume houses. However, Haitian farmers receive very little economic benefit and very little information about what the industry they participate in.

  • How does the extractive essential oil industry impact the lives and livelihoods of Haitian farmers? How do farmers understand the commodity chain they are a part of? 


  • I conducted ethnographic research with farmers, intermediaries, and oil producers in Haiti. 

  • Farmers receive a very small portion of the larger value chain. Their marginalized position is reflected in their beliefs about the destiny of vetiver oil: they believe that it is used to make planes fly. 

Agroecology as a response to extractive agriculture

  • Extractive agriculture, particularly in Haiti, creates patterns of economic and environmental destruction. In the shadows of such industries, small holding farmers struggle but have long practiced alternative forms of organizing labor and producing food 

  • How do smallholding agriculturalists organize themselves and their work in areas affected by extractive industry?

  • I have done research with rotational agricultural in Haiti: konbit, eskwad, ekip, ranpono. I have also worked with organizations and individuals in Haiti that are using agroecological methods that have long been a part of cultivation but that more recently have been pushed out by fertilizer and pesticide use.

  • Rotational labor groups in Haiti aim to distribute benefits among themselves and act in many ways as “counter plantation” entities that operate in opposition to external extraction of labor and resources. Organizations and movements in Haiti are actively working to create food ways that provide environmental and economic benefit.