Toxic Sensorium

Abstract

Pesticides and toxicity are constitutive features of modernization in Africa, despite ongoing portrayals of the continent as “too poor to pollute.” This article examines social science scholarship on agricultural pesticide expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa. We recount the rise of agrochemical usage in colonial projects that placed African smallholder farmers at the forefront of toxic vulnerability. We then outline prevalent literature on “knowledge deficits” and unsafe farmer practices as approaches that can downplay deeper structures. Missing in this literature, we argue, are the embodied and sensory experiences of African farmers as they become pesticide users, even amid an awareness of toxicity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Mozambique and Burkina Faso, we explore how the “toxic sensorium” of using agrochemicals intersects with farmers’ projects of modern aspiration. Th is approach can help elucidate why and how differently situated farmers live with pesticides, thereby expanding existing literature on structural violence and knowledge gaps.

Building coalitions in a nascent subsystem: Investigating beliefs and policy preferences in Ugandan pesticide policy

“…In Uganda, agriculture contributes around 25% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP) and employs more than 70% of the labor force (Karungi et al, 2011; Le Goff et al, 2022). Similar to other sub‐Saharan countries, the agricultural sector in Uganda is underfunded facing poor enforcement of existing regulations, and lacks agricultural research and extension services (Stein & Luna, 2021). This is mostly due to structural adjustment programs and trade liberalization, which have also contributed to easy access to pesticides, and their ubiquitous promotion (Bendjebbar & Fouilleux, 2022; Isgren & Andersson, 2021).…”

“…Criterion 2 ( Fitness for context ): Ugandan agriculture is shaped by small‐scale subsistence farming. Although the use of pesticides per hectare of land is comparably low, exposure to risk is elevated due to a lack of protective equipment, access to counterfeit and toxic products, and limited knowledge of recommended amounts (Staudacher et al, 2021; Stein & Luna, 2021). Based on this criterion, we excluded four policy instruments and included the remaining 22 in the survey. Criterion 3 ( Conflictuality 1 ): In a nascent subsystem, policy preferences are expected to be fragmented (Beverwijk et al, 2008) or amorphous (Stritch, 2015).…”

“…This is particularly true in sub‐Saharan Africa. Although agriculture is mainly shaped by small‐scale farming and strongly dependent on pesticides to enhance food security (Stein & Luna, 2021), policies regulating pesticide risks and applications are largely lacking or nonexistent. More concretely, we examine pesticide regulation in Uganda, where a consistent policy regime for pesticide risk reduction is lacking.…”

Introduction to Special Collection: Plant-Anthropo-Genesis: The Co-Production of Plant–People Lifeworlds

“…In the aftermath of disasters, whether nuclear or toxic chemical, with their lingering calibrations of half-lives and afterlives, we are offered glimpses of co-constituted and co-evolving remediation, repair, and reciprocity in Kumaki's (2022) poignant elaboration of the “ecologics…the material, social, and moral ecologies” in Fukushima. The “toxic sensorium” invoked by Stein and Luna (2021) foregrounds the agrochemicals harnessed by smallholder cash croppers in Mozambique and Burkina Faso, as pragmatic quotidian options “anchored in the belief…that more chemicals equal higher yields and household incomes” (Stein and Luna 2021, 88); despite the serious associated risks in these contexts of “rising rates of acute poisoning, ecological devastation, and unknown effects of long-term exposures and residues.” A similar rationale is applied by the “regenerative farmers” in New Zealand, whose cocktail of glyphosate laced with fulvic acid and other humates facilitates no-till practices as a modality of “care” for the land (Venkateswar 2021). Care and harm thus take on many forms, both visible and invisible and sometimes lethal, with the concatenation of injuries extending across people and the convivial multitudes of plant and other lifeforms, above and below ground, all laboring to live, remediate, and repair even as they resist or succumb to enduring contaminants (Tam 2023).…”

Pesticide: A Contemporary Cultural Object

“…Above all, however, the research has highlighted the growing ambivalence of growers towards pesticides-a conflicted sentiment between the need for their use for productive purposes and increasing concern about their effects on producers and agricultural products. This is testified by Waltz in Western Kenya [29], as well as by Stein and Luna in Burkina Faso and Mozambique, where the authors propose the concept of "toxic sensorium" to emphasize the embodied and emotional experiences that characterize the perception of chemicals [30]. Alongside this, the research raises the concerns of consumers who are worried about the safety of their food, which furthers the sociocultural distance between consumers and farmers in both the Global South [31] and the Global North [32].…”