The Global Greenhouse Boom: Emerging Geographies of Agri-Food Intensification in the Plantationocene

Abstract

The global greenhouse boom is central to the accelerating intensification of agri-food systems. Perspectives and principles of critical agrarian studies, the Plantationocene, and environment-society geography are used to offer a novel approach to the global greenhouse boom. Case studies of leading greenhouse countries (Spain, China, Morocco, Mexico) illustrate distinctive dynamics that have developed during recent decades. The perspectives and case studies are used to suggest insights and themes for future research. These center on the volumetric enclosures of the greenhouse boom, sociotechnical assemblages linked to long-distance market chains through transportation networks and new infrastructure, agrarian transformations of rural depopulation and national-international labor migration, spatial clustering fueled by land and water rushes that concentrate on the periurban territory of extended urbanization, and the marginalized food systems and precarity of greenhouse workers. Insights from the global greenhouse boom suggest the disruption of prevailing ideas of the geographic trajectories of global land-use intensification. The emergent new geographies of the global greenhouse boom abound with timely opportunities and well-suited challenges for future geographic research that is engaged with sustainability and justice.