Land and Seeds: The Cultural, Ecological, and Global Politics of Organic Agriculture in Latvia and Costa Rica.

Abstract

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnography of organic agriculture movements in the historically, culturally, and ecologically diverse contexts of Latvia and Costa Rica. It explores how the divergent traditions and practices surrounding landscape preservation, biodiversity conservation, and seed production have shaped national organic movements in these countries. My research reveals that despite radically different backgrounds and strategies, both movements are limited in similar ways due to their marginal positions within their respective countries and the global economy. They share certain problems in moving organically grown products to market, which differ from the trends of “conventionalization” encountered by organic sectors in industrialized countries. Further, the dissertation investigates how the two movements have reacted to the respective regional economic integration processes of joining the European Union (EU) and resisting entry into the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). I trace the course of two rural development struggles over land surveying and land use practices in Latvia, and intellectual property rights over seeds in Costa Rica. These struggles reflect broader contests over cultural landscapes as formed through organic farmer practices; public versus private control over space, place and property; the formation of farmer social networks and relations; and broader ideas of democracy and participation in social and political life. I argue that the culturally specific responses to these processes of regionalization and globalization have emerged out of the different environmental and agricultural histories, political narratives, and cultural symbols in each country. The Latvian organic movement tends towards re-territorialization, emphasizing the social imaginaries of the nation and land in response to the EU. In contrast, the Costa Rican organic movement has joined together with other social movements in resisting CAFTA through a global perspective of interchange and circulation of ideas across borders, paralleling their emphasis on seed exchange as a form of resistance to intellectual property rights. Heated debates at the global level about the standardization of norms for organic agriculture across such different ecological and cultural terrains reflect the difficulty of “uniting the organic world in all its diversity,” as stated in the mission of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).