PLANTS, PATHOGENS, AND THE POLITICS OF CARE: Xylella fastidiosa and the Intra‐active Breakdown of Mallorca's Almond Ecology

Almonds were once “the gold of Mallorca,” a source of modest wealth and a pillar of diversified farming systems for smallholders on the largest of Spain's Balearic Islands. Now researchers believe nearly every rainfed almond tree on the island will be dead within as few as five years. The introduced bacteria Xylella fastidiosa, enabled by its spittle‐bug vector, and emboldened by climate change, has flooded the xylem of these rainfed trees, impeding the flow of fluid and nutrients to the point where the tree can no longer survive. This article enrolls feminist theorizations of care and agential realism to broaden the political scope and stakes of a plant epidemic. I argue that by attending to the care relations underlying pathogenicity we can shift from narratives of landscape purification toward a more‐than‐human politics of care.