CANOLA AND TRANSFORMING CULTURAL AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES

Michael Gertler; JoAnn Jaffe

Todos os Trabalhos

Trabalho

DOI

10.29327/9786527226680.1442032

Título do Trabalho

CANOLA AND TRANSFORMING CULTURAL AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES

Autores

Michael Gertler
JoAnn Jaffe

Modalidade

IRSA - Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (01/10/2025 a 20/01/2026)

Área temática

IRSA 04 - Commodity Systems in the Anthropocene

Data de Publicação

06/08/2026

País da Publicação

Brasil

Idioma da Publicação

pt-BR

Página do Trabalho

https://www.even3.com.br/anais/sober-irsa2026/1442032-canola-and-transforming-cultural-and-agricultural-landscapes-on-the-canadian-prairies

ISBN

978-65-272-2668-0

Palavras-Chave

Canola, Canadian Prairies, farming systems, ecological risks, structural change

Resumo

As the leading example of diversification beyond ‘King Wheat’, canola has taken over as the number one crop in the three Prairie Provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. We explore connections between canola expansion and transforming farming systems by investigating related mutually constituting changes in farming culture, farm enterprises, and agribusiness strategy. We consider how a cluster of technologies centred on herbicide-resistant canola have helped to remake identities and social relations as well as production systems and the biophysical countryside. Through critical reading of diverse literatures, sector interviews, and documentation of changes in production systems, land use, land markets, and enterprise structure, we consider how the confluence of crop characteristics, subsector politics, and markets have aligned canola with the priorities of expanding farmers, agricultural scientists, agribusiness firms, and neoliberalizing governments. Market, agronomic, and ecological risks enter these fields by multiple routes and are key drivers of economic, technical, and political responses—and non-responses. We consider how canola, continuous cropping, and reduced tillage were packaged as a novel production regime that purported to respond to multiple risks of soils erosion and degradation, pathogens and pest resistance, agrichemical pollution, fossil fuel dependency, and climate change and ask how risks and risk cultures associated with canola shape its development and prospects. In the face of biodiversity losses, slow-motion desertification, land concentration, rising rural inequalities, and Indigenous justice demands, can climate-smart agriculture, regenerative farming, or food movements change the trajectory of commodity production in an extractivist agricultural economy developing alongside the region’s remunerative petroleum, mineral, and forestry regimes? Looking beyond Canada, what can be learned through comparison with developments such as soybean expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado?

Título do Evento: 16th World Congress of Rural Sociology and 64th Congress of the Brazilian Society of Rural Economics, Management and Sociology
Cidade do Evento: Porto Alegre
Título dos Anais do Evento: Anais do 64º Congresso da SOBER e XVI Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (IRSA)
Nome da Editora: Even3
Meio de Divulgação: Meio Digital
DOI

Como citar

GERTLER, Michael; JAFFE, JoAnn. CANOLA AND TRANSFORMING CULTURAL AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES.. In: Anais do 64º Congresso da SOBER e XVI Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (IRSA). Anais...Porto Alegre(RS) UFRGS, 2026. Disponível em: https//www.even3.com.br/anais/sober-irsa2026/1442032-CANOLA-AND-TRANSFORMING-CULTURAL-AND-AGRICULTURAL-LANDSCAPES-ON-THE-CANADIAN-PRAIRIES. Acesso em: 22/09/2026