The Government of Beans : Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops

Kregg Hetherington uses Paraguay's turn of the twenty-first century adoption of massive soybean production and the regulatory attempts to mitigate the resulting environmental degradation as a way to show how the tools used to drive economic growth exacerbate the very environmental challenges they were designed to solve. "THE GOVERNMENT OF BEANS is a multispecies ethnography on the proliferation of the vast soybean monocrop in Paraguay and its ensuing effects on the government, agriculture, population, and environment. As Kregg Hetherington shows, soy monocropping, which was expanding at an average of 200,000 square hectares per year at the turn of the twenty-first century, has consumed most of Paraguay's arable land, contributing to rising inequity, poor health, deforestation, and climate change. The book highlights the failed attempts by campesinos, NGOs, and the government to contain the soy monocrops. Hetherington largely focuses on a group of activist bureaucrats, which he refers to as the Government of Beans, who from 2008-2012 tested the hypothesis that a stronger state, empowered to intervene in the excesses of the soy industry, would be able to slow down the advance of agribusiness interests, and thereby help to promote rural welfare and environmental health. These activist bureaucrats failed in their attempts, and Hetherington shows that what happened in Paraguay has profound global significance. The book is divided into three parts. Part I: A Cast of Characters presents backstories of the critical actors-- including individuals, plants, government agencies, and political coalitions-- that made up the Government of Beans. This section explores the challenges in defining an adequate temporality for regulation, since the growth of the monocrop was in itself very unpredictable. Part II: The Government of Beans tells the story of how the Government of Beans attempted and failed to change the way the Paraguayan state regulated its agricultural sector and the tensions that ensued in the process. More specifically, the regulations implemented by the Government of Beans failed to predict certain outcomes, such as how they would be individually implemented by farmers as well as the rapidity and effects of the growing soy, which seemed to have a life of its own. The actions of the Government of Beans were thus always experimental in nature, hoping for better outcomes and a better future with no guarantee about the effects. Part III: The Long Green Revolution offers a genealogical look at the way the intensification of agriculture has always implicated state actors. Developing a theory of "agribiopolitics," this section calls for a better understanding about the intimate, but rarely theorized, political relationship between human health and plant health, and a reflection on why welfare policies and ecological modernism are insufficient frames to work our way out of environmental destruction. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in anthropology, geography, Latin American studies, and environmental studies"-- Provided by publisher THE GOVERNMENT OF BEANS is a multispecies ethnography on the proliferation of the vast soybean monocrop in Paraguay and its ensuing effects on the government, agriculture, population, and environment. As Kregg Hetherington shows, soy monocropping, which was expanding at an average of 200,000 square hectares per year at the turn of the twenty-first century, has consumed most of Paraguay's arable land, contributing to rising inequity, poor health, deforestation, and climate change. The book highlights the failed attempts by campesinos, NGOs, and the government to contain the soy monocrops. Hetherington largely focuses on a group of activist bureaucrats, which he refers to as the Government of Beans, who from 2008-2012 tested the hypothesis that a stronger state, empowered to intervene in the excesses of the soy industry, would be able to slow down the advance of agribusiness interests, and thereby help to promote rural welfare and environmental health. These activist bureauc rats failed in their attempts, and Hetherington shows that what happened in Paraguay has profound global significance. The book is divided into three parts. Part I: A Cast of Characters presents backstories of the critical actors-- including individuals, plants, government agencies, and political coalitions that made up the Government of Beans. This section explores the challenges in defining an adequate temporality for regulation, since the growth of the monocrop was in itself very unpredictable. Part II: The Government of Beans tells the story of how the Government of Beans attempted and failed to change the way the Paraguayan state regulated its agricultural sector and the tensions that ensued in the process. More specifically, the regulations implemented by the Government of Beans failed to predict certain outcomes, such as how they would be individually implemented by farmers as well as the rapidity and effects of the growing soy, which seemed to have a life of its own. The actions of the Government of Beans were thus always experimental in nature, hoping for better outcomes and a better future with no guarantee about the effects. Part III: The Long Green Revolution offers a genealogical look at the way the intensification of agriculture has always implicated state actors. Developing ^a theory of "agribiopolitics," this section calls for a better understanding about the intimate, but rarely theorized, political relationship between human health and plant health, and a reflection on why welfare policies and ecological modernism are insufficient frames to work our way out of environmental destruction. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in anthropology, geography, Latin American studies, and environmental studies" Cover 1 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction · Governing the Anthropocene 12 Part I | A Cast of Characters 30 Chapter One · The Accidental Monocrop 34 Chapter Two · Killer Soy 43 Chapter Three · The Absent State 54 Chapter Four · The Living Barrier 64 Chapter Five · The Plant Health Service 73 Chapter Six · The Vast Tofu Conspiracy 81 Part II | An Experiment in Government 92 Chapter Seven · Capturing the Civil Service 96 Chapter Eight · Citizen Participation 107 Chapter Nine · Regulation by Denunciation 117 Chapter Ten · Citation, Sample, and Parallel States 131 Chapter Eleven · Measurement as Tactical Sovereignty 141 Chapter Twelve · A Massacre Where the Army Used to Be 155 Part III | Agribiopolitics 168 Chapter Thirteen · Plant Health and Human Health 174 Chapter Fourteen · A Philosophy of Life 185 Chapter Fifteen · Cotton, Welfare, and Genocide 195 Chapter Sixteen · Immunizing Welfare 205 Chapter Seventeen · Dummy Huts and the Labor of Killing 214 Conclusion · Remains of Experiments Past 227 Notes 234 Bibliography 268 Index 288 A 288 B 289 C 290 D 291 E 291 F 291 G 291 H 292 I 292 J 292 K 293 L 293 M 293 N 294 O 294 P 294 Q 295 R 295 S 295 T 297 U 297 V 297 W 297 Y 297 The Government of Beans is about the rough edges of environmental regulation, where tenuous state power and blunt governmental instruments encounter ecological destruction and social injustice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Paraguay was undergoing dramatic economic, political, and environmental change due to a boom in the global demand for soybeans. Although the country's massive new soy monocrop brought wealth, it also brought deforestation, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and violence. Kregg Hetherington traces well-meaning attempts by bureaucrats and activists to regulate the destructive force of monocrops that resulted in the discovery that the tools of modern government are at best inadequate to deal with the complex harms of modern agriculture and at worst exacerbate them. The book simultaneously tells a local story of people, plants, and government; a regional story of the rise and fall of Latin America's new left; and a story of the Anthropocene writ large, about the long-term, paradoxical consequences of destroying ecosystems in the name of human welfare. The accidental monocrop -- Killer soy -- The absent state -- A living barrier -- The plant health service -- A vast tofu conspiracy -- Capturing the Civil Service -- Citizen participation -- Regulation by denunciation -- Citation, sample, and parallel states -- Tactical sovereignty -- A massacre where the army used to be -- Plant health versus biopolitics -- Life philosophy -- Cotton, welfare, and genocide -- Immunizing welfare -- Dummy huts, rented fields and the labor of killing