The Biopower of Abundance: Towards Agroecological Worldings

This article examines how grassroots agroecological practices, as carried out by small farmers and neorurals in the Cerro Manjui cloud forest of Colombia, hinge on a continuum that connects agricultural techniques, soil health, microorganismic life and forest ecosystems. Drawing on posthumanist scholarship on biopolitics and morphogenesis, the study demonstrates how a biopower of abundance offers an alternative to the hegemonic discourse of development and growth, which is fuelled by agro-industrial economies in Latin America. In rural Colombia, abundance does not necessarily refer to the utopia of freedom and happiness promoted by liberal democratic ideals; on the contrary, it points to flourishing and wellbeing across species. In short, abundance signifies autonomy and resistance against late-capitalist ideologies of scarcity.