Cultivating Time as Power: Bt Cotton Seeds, Olive Cultivars, and Agrarian Temporalities in Israel/Palestine and India

Abstract

Agriculture has long been deeply intertwined with various temporalities, including environmental and seasonal cycles, market rhythms, and labor time. However, the role of time as a central agent of power—shaped by capitalist structures, developmental and state policies, and sociotechnical imaginaries—has remained a marginal consideration in critical agrarian studies. Drawing on ethnographic research on the politics of Bt cotton seeds in India and a new olive variety developed for industrialized olive oil production in Israel/Palestine, we argue that agrarian materials—such as seeds and cultivars—embody social temporalities, materializing the politics of time as both products and producers of contested temporal frameworks. Such analytical approach is increasingly needed as struggles over time are becoming a feature of agrarian dynamics in the context of climate change.