Embedded Pesticide Use: Exploring the Pesticide-Land Nexus

Since the turn of the century, global land grabs, farmland financialization and land-based food sovereignty movements have returned the land question to the heart of agrarian studies. Meanwhile, abiding interest in pesticides has been reanimated in the face of changes in production, regulation and knowledge of toxicity. Yet the nexus of pesticides and land remains underappreciated—and under-researched. This paper thus argues for more attention to the pesticide-land nexus, proceeding first through a discussion of how pesticides might affect land uses and land valuation in theory, next through a specific case study of the California strawberry industry which has most clearly and perhaps exceptionally demonstrated the connection between pesticide use and land values, land uses and rent relations, and finally through a review of other cases that have alluded to how pesticides affect present and future land values and land uses. While the land-pesticide nexus is causally indeterminate, pesticides generally make production of cash crops competitive and can increase the economic value of land. At the same time, pesticides can alter the materiality of land itself and often condition how adjacent land can be used. Whether increasing land values or degrading land, persistent pesticide use generally forecloses the ability to farm otherwise, suggesting the need to address land access and land costs as a critical path for reducing or eliminating pesticide use in agriculture.