Journal Article

Transformational Agroecology: The Making and Unmaking of Zero Budget Natural Farming in India

Published on 15 April 2025

Agroecology is increasingly seen to have the potential to transform agriculture towards sustainability and social justice. Recent studies have highlighted different characteristics and principles of such transformative agroecology.

Scholars have also shown that agroecology practices can be scaled up to achieve broader transformation. However, the process of systematising approaches to transformative agroecology often creates a static vision of transformation, which could be achieved once and for all. The static view creates illusionary binaries of goods and bads of agroecology that separate the ideological scholarly view from everyday, contested and messy practices. In this article, we discuss the case of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) in India to argue that transformational agroecology is made and unmade repeatedly at different sites, networks and practices it gets entangled in. As a result, rather than thinking of transformative agroecology as a goal or target to be achieved, it is more useful to see it as an everyday struggle requiring unwavering scrutiny with a commitment to care for the marginal concerns.

Cite this publication

Pandey, P. and Cabral, L. (2025) Transformational Agroecology: The Making and Unmaking of Zero Budget Natural Farming in India. Science, Technology and Society, 0(0), DOI: 10.1177/09717218251326835

Authors

Poonam Pandey

Post-Growth Innovation lab, University of Vigo, Spain

Lídia Cabral

Rural Futures Cluster Lead

Publication details

published by
Sage Publications
doi
https://doi.org/10.1177/09717218251326835

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