Rewriting our agri-culture: a discursive analysis on agroecology within Australia

Abstract

The way in which society organises agriculture affects every aspect of our lives: our approach to the land and its organisms, the building of civilisations, economic inequality, gender relations, human health and our relationship with the land’s original custodians. Yet humanity has organised itself around an industrialised global food system which erodes democracy, perpetuates injustices, undermines human health and is environmentally fatal. Recognising this, farmers, activists and scholars have been calling for a transition to agroecological food systems for centuries. It is a paradigm which holistically addresses the agri-culture of our food systems; not just the sustainability of agroecosystems, but the socio-political structures that design them. This work joins the movement of literature calling for epistemic justice in the institutionalisation of agroecology in food governance. It endeavours to provide a more in-depth understanding of the discourses of sustainable agriculture that operate within Australia. It contributes to the paucity of literature covering agroecology’s nascent development within the country. A poststructuralist discourse analysis (PSDA) analyses the discursive formations of sustainable agriculture operated by the state and civil society actors involved in the debate. It will examine if there are any spaces of “dislocation” through which the paradigm of agroecology can emerge in mainstream discourse. Ultimately, it will reveal how the historic institutionalisation of productivist discourses by dominant groups has resulted in an epistemic community which remains unfavourable to a just transition towards agroecological food systems by 2100.