Beyond Productivity: Reimagining Futures of Agriculture and Bioeconomy
Online-Workshop 08.10.2021
Politically dominant strategies in the fields of agricultural development and bioeconomy, even those which take Sustainable Development Goals seriously, stick to what might be called a ‘Productivity Paradigm’: increasing productivity is considered to be necessary to alleviate the rising biomass demand and the resulting competition on land use.
Still, there are visions of agriculture and bioeconomy which implicitly question a main pillar of the politically dominant positions on Sustainable Future: productivity increase. These visions are being proposed by politically subdominant stakeholder groups both in the Global North and the Global South. However, the fact that these alternative visions of agriculture imply reduction in productivity growth is often considered as an objection against these visions. For the critics, it seems to be inconceivable how the global demand for biomass could be justly satisfied, if the agricultural productivity will not increase.
More details are in the Background Paper.
Workshop Goals
With this workshop, we aim to impugn the controversy around productivity by reflecting the normative presuppositions of the Productivity Paradigm. Additionally, we shall discuss how decolonized visions of an agriculture without productivity growth could capture both discursive and material space.
A further goal of the workshop is to bring together scholars and activists from different countries of the Global South and the Global North interested in visions of agricultural development and bioeconomy which are independent of productivity increase. Guided by short inputs from invited speakers, the workshop shall enable an exchange of ideas, research suggestions, politicization strategies as well as networking and getting to know other experts in the field.
Programme
10.00-10.15 | Introduction and Welcome | ||||
10.15-12.00 | Part 1: Visions of Agriculture and the Role of Productivity there
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12.00-13.00 | Break | ||||
13.00-14.45 | Part 2: Towards Decolonization of Productivity?
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