Entangled pathways of the Plantationocene: early colonial monocropping, subaltern agrobiodiversity, and aridity in Andalus (Spain) and Coastal Peru

ABSTRACT

The long-term (AD 1300–1800), multi-scale interactions of monocropping and subaltern agri-food systems of Andalus (Spain) and coastal Peru reveal the entangled transformations of the Plantationocene. Historically convergent colonial monocultures (wheat, sugar, cotton, sheep, cattle) entangled with the divergence and plurality of resilient yet precarious diverse-food affordances of subaltern groups (peasants, indigenous people, enslaved persons, Mudejares, Moriscos). Using political ecology, the comparative cases illuminate how Plantationocene colonial entanglements were shaped through spatial movements and social-environmental affordances of biota, populations, and institutions. New empirical understanding and a novel conceptual and analytical framework offer insight into Plantationocene pathways, alternatives, and struggles.

KEYWORDS:

• Plantationocene
• agrobiodiversity
• entanglements
• monocropping
• subaltern food
• colonial agrarian and food histories
• critical agrarian studies
• Andalus (Spain) and Peru

I. Introduction: Plantationocene entanglements of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies

This study examines the long-term, multi-scale interactions and cross-cutting influences of the global monocultures of colonial societies and the diverse-food strategies of subaltern groups using a historical case study (AD 1300–1800) of Andalus (Spain) and Peru. Insight on the non-binary, connected relationality of contrasting agri-food politics and assemblages (Carolan 2018) motivates this study’s goal to advance understanding of the Plantationocene (Haraway 2015). The Plantationocene is distinguished by the racialized, colonial, and corporate exploitation of people and the environment (Barua 2023; McKittrick 2013; Murphy and Schroering 2020) through the global proliferation of agri-food monocultures (specialized agricultural production and food systems based on single types of crops and livestock). Additional agronomic, cultural, and economic qualities of Plantationocene monocultures include high levels of agrochemical and water inputs, the exploitation of precarious workers (e.g. historically peasants, indigenous people, enslaved Africans, immigrant farmworkers), and the economic and geographic characteristics of long-distance and colonial power, extractive logics and monopoly markets, territorial control and enclosures, and cross-scale mobility (Barua 2023; Chao et al. 2023; McKittrick 2013; Wolford 2021).

By framing the Plantationocene concept and its analytics as inclusive of both monoculture and subaltern diverse-food strategies – evident in their historical interactions and ongoing influences – this study seeks to contribute to socially just and sustainable agri-food alternatives. Here our study responds to calls that ‘what the [Plantationocene] concept does not yet effectively do is bring into relief the subaltern archipelagos of agrobiodiversity that the Plantationocene spawned’ (Carney 2021, 1094). Our framework of the Plantationocene uses the idea of political-ecological entanglements as the relationships of humans and non-humans whose multiple forces, directionalities, and scales produce historical change (Nading 2013; Neely 2021; Voelkner 2022; Zimmerer, Rojas, and Hosse 2022). Formative Plantationocene pathways entangle developments of both the expansive monocropping that propels oppressive political ecologies of socioenvironmental destruction and the diverse-food strategies of subaltern survival and resistance that can advance social justice-guided sustainability (Carney 2003; 2021; Carney and Rosomoff 2011; Watkins 2021; Wolford 2021; Zimmerer 2015; Zimmerer et al. 2023).

In broad overview, this study considers a triad of defining political-ecological entanglements of the Plantationocene. First, we frame colonial monocropping and diverse-food strategies of subaltern groups as contrasting yet entangled political-ecological transformations. This approach seeks to move beyond a sole agri-food focus (monocropping or subaltern) with the other mode treated as antithetical, unrelated, or functionally derivative. Second, we examine multi-scale, spatial movements – ranging from transoceanic or global to local – of colonial power, populations, and diverse food biota (also referred to as subaltern agrobiodiversity or the distinct sociocultural-and-ecological food types and sub-types combining human-biota assemblages of plants, animals, and other non-human elements). This mobility entangled the Plantationocene historical transformations of monoculture and subaltern food strategies. Our attention to wide-ranging movements (long-, medium, and short-distance) of food biota through colonial spatial networks and landscapes complements current understandings of the Plantationocene spatialities of transported slave labor (Haraway 2015, 162), landscape simplification (Wolford 2021), and diasporic conditions (Barua 2023; McKittrick 2013). Third, we frame multi-species food biota as comprising multiple, distinct assemblages and spaces – rather than singular attention to escape crops (Scott 2010), plantation gardens (Carney 2021), or fugitive landscapes (Zimmerer 2015; Zimmerer and Bell 2015) – to reveal the plurality of power-differentiated entanglements propelling the Plantationocene.

Our research pairs comparative, structured case studies of the interconnected regions of Andalus (Andalucía, Murcia, and Valencia portions of historical southern Spain and earlier Islamic Al-Andalus) and coastal Peru during the AD 1300–1800 period (Figure 1).¹ Focus on these distinct-yet-similar-and-connected geographic regions enables our historical political-ecological analysis of powerful common developments that were globally important and suggest broad generalization. These two regions shared networked colonial histories and common environmental affordances (sensu Nally and Kearns 2020, next section), notably specific diverse-food biota (i.e. the diversity of food-providing organisms including plants, animals, and other organisms) and the landscape roles of environmental aridity (detailed in Study Design). Our comparative approach builds on multi-site designs in Plantationocene and postcolonial research (Carney 2021; Watkins 2021; Wolford 2021) while examining previously understudied regions (colonial territories in present-day Spain and those of the Spanish Empire in Latin America) that entwined with extensive Islamic and African influences (see Study Design and Methods).

Figure 1. Major Plantationocene demographic and food-biota movements of Andalus, Coastal Peru, Africa, and Asia between AD 1300 and 1800 (double arrows) with examples of pre-1300 precursors (single arrows).

The next sections describe the framework and methods to examine historical, political-ecological entanglements of: (1) colonial monocropping of expanding global plantation mainstays (wheat, sugar cane, cotton, sheep, and cattle); (2) nascent plantation monocrops (Asian rice, bananas, orange, indigo, olive, and wine-producing grapes), and (3) more than thirty diverse-food biota in the survival strategies of peasant populations, enslaved persons, and indigenous peoples that highlight connections with Africa and the Middle East. The empirical sections then narrate our results on these entanglements in Andalus and coastal Peru during AD 1300–1800. The discussion advances Plantationocene insights and the key concepts, followed by main concluding points.

II. Theoretical and analytic framework

Our framework integrates three theoretical concepts to analyze the differentiated development and dynamics of monocultures – including specialized livestock – and subaltern diverse-food assemblages of the early Plantationocene. First is the idea of entanglement as introduced (see also Neely 2021; Voelkner 2022; Zimmerer, Rojas, and Hosse 2022), along with its corollary of rooted networks (Bassett, Koné, and Munro 2022). The entanglement concept guides our analysis of: (1) relations of monocropping (defined as the processes of single-type agricultural production and food-system functions, see above; on terminological usage of ‘monocropping’ see Wolford 2021) and subaltern, diverse-food strategies (in which food is both a material and symbolic resource in the survival and well-being of disempowered groups that identify as resisting and opposing dominant rulers) as contrasting yet interconnected through labor, knowledge-skill, land, water, and seed, among other factors; (2) movements of common food biota entangled in the networks of Andalus and coastal Peru while extending to North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, and other world regions, in addition to Europe; and (3) networks of colonial powers and institutions, subject populations and their movements and food biota, and environments and landscapes.

Second is the concept of affordances defined as human, biotic, and material capacities (Nally and Kearns 2020). Our use of this concept centers on influential environmental, biotic, and geographic capacities and limitations of food systems (including distinctions within non-human assemblages) (Angé et al. 2018). Recent affordances theory has been applied to agrarian history (Nally and Kearns 2020), landscapes (Kneas 2021), and biodiversity (Andersson and McPhearson 2018). Our framework of affordances and entanglements enables us to distinguish the agencies of diverse non-humans that otherwise can remain a glossed category in Plantationocene discourse (Haraway 2015).

Third is the historical political-ecological concept of landscape differentiation through spatialized colonial power dynamics and environmental factors (Zimmerer and Bell 2015; see also Carney 2003; Watkins 2021). The concept of landscape differentiation is used here for the spatial analysis of monocultures and subaltern diverse food. It is informed further through the landscape ideas of environmental history, historical geography, and archaeology (Kirchner 2021; Retamero 2021; Sluyter 2002, 2012).

III. Study design and methods

The methodology of comparative historical political ecology was used to examine Andalus in southern Spain and coastal Peru through their colonial interconnections. This comparative design is well suited to examine formative developments in the global Plantationocene (Bell 2015; Carney 2021; Offen 2004; Watkins 2021; Wolford 2021). Andalus and coastal Peru were interconnected through colonial movements of food biota and diverse populations (Gade 2015), in addition to institutions and other commonalities introduced in Section I. The study design incorporates key inter-regional differences, such as the influences of indigenous people and larger enslaved African populations in coastal Peru. Our initial research (2018–2021) analyzed agrarian and food-system histories to design the preliminary periodization as: (i) formative, global Plantationocene development (1450–1600) and ensuing transitions (1650–1800) toward the modern period (Bell 2018; Carney 2021; Chocano 2020; Wolford 2021); and (ii) early Castilian colonization in Andalus and powerful indigenous precursors in Peru (1300–1450) that postcolonial perspectives have shown to be crucial inclusions (Retamero and Torró 2018, 3; see also Agresta 2021; Glick 2005; Lockhart 1994).

This study utilized four document types with information on Andalus and coastal Peru: published scholarly works (see references cited in Sections I–V and Appendix 1); published colonial documents created during the time period of interest (e.g. Repartimientos in Andalus; Relaciones Geográficas in coastal Peru); scholarly editions of accounts by colonial authors (e.g. Yahyá Ibn Muhammad Al-Awwam, Bernabé Cobo, Pedro de Cieza de León); and unpublished documents in the Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN) in Lima, Peru. Notes were taken on the types, dates, location, and landscape and environmental information of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies (including diverse food biota of specific crop and animal types); relations of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies to colonial institutions, environmental affordances, and landscapes; and relations to cultural, social, political-economic, and multi-scale spatial movements (local, regional, transoceanic, and global-scale). Critical colonial historiography guided analysis. For example, interpretation of the Spanish colonial chronicler Cieza de León (1984) distinguished places that he actually visited from others he described as first-person travel accounts per then-current representational norms (i.e. autoptic imagination; Safier 2014).

A secondary research component consisted of the authors’ fieldwork in Andalus and coastal Peru encompassing informal interactions and landscape visits between 2018 and 2022 (e.g. Red Andaluza de Semilla 2022, diverse peri-urban gardens in Piura, Peru 2018 & 2022). Integrating fieldwork with historical and archive research (Watkins and Carney 2022; Zimmerer 2012, 2015; Zimmerer and Bell 2015) enhanced our understanding of suggestive though incomplete documentation of the dynamics of diverse-food biota (e.g. zarandaja or West African lablab bean) and upland-valley landscapes (Yahyá Ibn Muhammad Al-Awwam, Bernabé Cobo, Pedro de Cieza de León; see also Agresta 2021; Quilter 2020).

Finally, the theoretical framework and analyses are used to structure the narration of historical results. Each section’s narrative begins by analyzing the entanglements of diverse-food strategies and biota with spatial movements and influences dating to the 1300s and earlier. The narratives then examine the distinctive colonial monocultures of the 1400s–1700s (including land- and labor-grab political-economic institutions), the entanglements with subaltern diverse-food strategies and biota, and, finally, the role of differentiated landscape dynamics.

IV. Results: colonial monocropping and subaltern strategies in Andalus (1300–1800)

Monocropped and diverse-food biota of Andalus in the 1300–1800 period can be traced back to pre-1300 Iberian agroecologies and food biota movements from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa through the Mediterranean context (Figure 1, Table 1, Appendix 1a). Pre-1300 populations of Andalus grew diverse wheat, barley, rye, fava bean, field pea, lentil, Mediterranean lupine, cattle, sheep, and pigs (Agresta 2021; Butzer 2005; Peña-Chocarro et al. 2019). Early food-biota movements connected Andalus to Africa and the eastern Mediterranean during the long period of Islamic rulers beginning in the 700s. This pre-1300 phase featured a once-argued ‘Arab Agricultural Revolution’ (or ‘Medieval Green Revolution,’ eighth-eleventh centuries) under Islamic rule (Watson 1974). These Islamic introductions of food biota to Andalus were subsequently recognized as more spatio-temporally extensive than had been posited (García Sánchez 1995; Horden and Purcell 2000; Squatriti 2014; Trillo San Jose 2005). The findings and perspective of geographic research highlight additional long-term historical ties to South and Southeast Asia (Rangan, Carney, and Denham 2012) and Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. watermelon, sorghum, lablab bean, cucumber, and cattle; Table 1). Islamic introductions to Andalus included sugar cane, cotton, eggplant, alfalfa, cumin, banana, spinach, artichoke, sour orange, citron, lemon, lime, grapefruit, flax, hemp, and mulberry (Bermejo, Esteban, and Sánchez 1998; also Butzer et al. 1985; Sauer 1993) and new cultivars of olive trees (Diez et al. 2015; Jiménez-Ruiz et al. 2020; Martínez-Moreno et al. 2023; Terral et al. 2004), hard wheat (Martínez-Moreno et al. 2023; Moragues et al. 2007), and date palms (Azuar Ruiz 1998; Rivera et al. 2013; Sauer 1993).

Table 1. Common subaltern crops in contexts of colonial conquests and occupations in Andalus and coastal Peru (1300–1800) (additional details in Appendix 1a).

English name	Early presence in Andalus shown as century AD (7th–14th centuries indicates direct Islamic influence)	Early presence in Coastal Peru shown as century AD
Cauliflower	10th	19th
Chickpea; garbanzo bean	Pre-1st	16th
Eggplant	10th	16th
Honey melon	Present but unspecified early history	16th
Hyacinth or lablab bean	Historically undocumented (currently present)	Historically undocumented (currently present)
Lentil	Pre-1st	16th
Rice	10th	17th, 16th coastal Ecuador
Sesame	10th (probable)	16th (probable by enslaved Africans)
Sorghum	11th	18th (probable by enslaved Africans)
Spinach	11th	16th
Sugar cane	7th	16th
Watermelon	10th	17th (probable by enslaved Africans)
Alfalfa	2nd century BCE, with Muslim re-introduction in 8th century	17th
Apricot	10th	16th
Banana	7th	16th
Plantain	Unspecified	18th
Bitter orange	11th	16th
Black mulberry	Unspecified early history (expanded under Islamic rule)	19th
Carob	7th	16th
Citron	7th	16th
Date palm	5th century BCE, with a Muslim re-introduction in 10th century	16th
Fig	6th	16th
Grapefruit	12th	16th
Key lime	14th	16th
Lemon	10th	16th
Pomelo; pummelo	11th	17th (probable-directly from China and Philippines)
Sweet orange, Valencian orange	15th (probable-Genoese merchants)	16th
Cotton	10th	10th BCE, subsequently cross-continental, hybridized cotton in 18th
Hemp	1st BCE or 10th (uncertain)	17th
Saffron	7th	17th
True indigo	11th	17th (‘Old World indigo’)

By 1300, the afore-mentioned biota had become staple foods of the subaltern populations of Islamic and Christian peasants in Andalus as well as enslaved Africans and, later, Mudejares and Moriscos² (for further background on the historical roles of these groups see Agresta 2021). Subaltern diets, which traced many elements to the Islamic period, were generally diverse and nutritious (García Sánchez 1988). Consumption of C4 cereals (e.g. sorghum and millet) was notable, with geographic variations (Inskip et al. 2019). Poorer groups consumed less meat and had a plant-based diet of cereals – primarily wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, and foxtail millet – and legumes complemented with diverse fruits and vegetables (García Sánchez 1988, 187, 189) that contrasted upper-class meat consumption – especially sheep (mutton), followed by beef (Morales Muñiz et al. 2011) along with spices (García Sánchez 1988, 186).

Tracing to the 1300s and earlier, diverse knowledge and techniques were used to produce and consume the highly varied food biota of Andalus, thus shaping affordances and multi-functionality (agronomic, agroecological, food) that would later become differentiated under Castilian colonialism (García Sánchez 1995; Retamero 2021). Annual plants were widely intercropped in polycultures with diverse perennials and tree crops of nuts and fruits eaten fresh, dried, pressed into oils, or ground into flours. This multi-species intercropping (e.g. wheat with olives, figs, and nut trees; sugar cane with citrus and bananas, Mediterranean lupines with grape vines and sumac; Table 1) infused the cultivation of diverse food biota (García Sánchez 1995; Bermejo, Esteban, and Sánchez 1998, 24). Moreover, in the 1300s and 1400s even commercial cropping in Andalus, such as sugar cane, grape, and mulberry production (for silk-making), were intercropped with food trees and field crops (Fábregas García 2018, 311; Trillo San José 2004, 210).

Castilian colonizers expanded crop monocultures, as well as specialized livestock, in the Reconquista or ‘Christian feudal colonization’ that by 1300 were already inter-mixed with subaltern diverse-food strategies in Andalus landscapes (Figure 2; Kirchner 2021). This Castilian colonization racialized the accumulation and control of the land and labor of Mudejares, Moriscos, and enslaved Africans as racially ‘other’ populations. The subaltern diverse-food biota increasingly entangled with a series of specialized monocrops (wheat, sugar cane, cotton, sheep, cattle). The Reconquista propelled the "cerealization" of Andalus and other regions as an initial wave of monocrop specialization. Grazing areas for cattle, pigs, and sheep were also integral to the Castilian strategies for territorial control in the Reconquista (Retamero and Torro 2018). In addition, certain minor Andalus crops that were perhaps subject to partial specialized monocropping later became major global monocrops elsewhere (citrus, rice, banana, indigo, wine grapes, olive). For example, vineyards were expanded for wine production in the Reconquista (Malpica Cuello and Trillo San José 2002; Trillo San José 2004, 210), primarily in rainfed lands given to settlers (Martínez Enamorado 2010). Yet monocropping was not an inherent property of these biota, as detailed below. The prevalent, intercropping of sugar cane among Mudejar, Morisco, and peasant populations in southern Andalus, for example, illustrated that its monocrop role was ultimately partial in these early Plantationocene pathways.

Figure 2. Study region of Andalus and surrounding areas.

The notable expansions of Andalus monocropping occurred amid large-scale, Castilian settler-colonization occurring both before and after the fall of the Emirate of Granada in 1492 and the expulsion of the Morisco population in 1571 (Retamero 2021, 187) (Figures 2 and 3; Appendix 1b). The influential background to this phase was the Castilian military conquest and colonization of the 1300s and 1400s (Table 2). Castilian settler-colonization specialized in monocropped wheat, detailed below, even as sugar monocrops expanded in southern Andalus (e.g. Motril, Almuñecar, and Vélez-Málaga; Figure 2) to become Europe's predominant sugar source for a time.

Figure 3. Timeline of major events in Andalus (lower) and Coastal Peru (upper), 1300–1800, with key precursors of the 1200s.

Table 2. Overview of expanded monocropping and livestock in Andalus (1300–1800) (additional details in Appendix 1b).

Crop or livestock type	Precursor conditions of crop	Summary of expanded monocropping and livestock	Sub-period of expansion	Examples of key places
Wheat	Expanded under Roman ‘cerealization’ and polyculture under Islamic rule	Expanded monocropping integral to Castilian colonization	1300–1600	Wheat dry farming in uplands and irrigated wheat in valleys
Sugar Cane	Sugar intercropped under Islamic rule with monocropping surrounded by peasant mixed agriculture	Expanded monocropping after Castilian/Aragonese colonization, and increased export	1300–1500	Vélez-Málaga, Almuñecar, Motril
Cotton	Initial spread after Arab-Berber invasion and Córdova Caliphate Almería botanical garden and Andalusi Agronomic School	Expanded monoculture for Catalan textile factories	1700s	Southern Andalus
Sheep	Merino sheep became widespread, named for N. African conquerors (meriníes, Banu-Marin)	Expanded with Castilian conquest and occupation	1300–1500s	Andalus
Grape-Growing/Vine-yards	Intensive grape growing with other crops under Islamic rule	Castilian occupation expanded grape monocropping for wine	1300–1500s	Concentrated in southern Andalus
Cattle	Present under Islamic rule	Expanded grazing areas (dehesas and boyales) under Castilian occupation	1300–1500s	Almería
Olive	Important during Islamic rule; intercropped with wheat	Expanded cultivation in rainfed lands following Castilian occupation	1300–1600s	Guadalquivir Valley, Almería, Huerta de Gandía

Castilian colonization drove monocropping (including specialized livestock production) though the re-feudalization of land tenure with large estates (latifundia) locally interspersed with small- and medium-size landholdings of peasant farms (minifundia) around villages or alquerías (Carmona Ruiz 2018; Guinot Rodríguez 2018; Segura Graíño 1982). Repartimiento, the colonial institution of land allocation and regularization, was a common Castilian ‘plunder-allocation technique’ of these re-feudalized landscapes (Malpica Cuello 2018; Retamero and Torró 2018, 3). The Castilian colonial land grabs were also facilitated by the demographic decline of the Bubonic plague in the 1300s. Land allotments were divided by rank among the conquerors. Thousands of new settler-colonists included large peasant populations as well as the military and nobility (Glick 2005, 227; Retamero 2021).

Under the Castilian colonial regime, feudal and ‘free’ peasants supplied the labor for estate monocropping (e.g. wheat, cattle, sugar cane) and for their own sustenance and small-scale marketing (Glick 2005, 164). Mudejares and Moriscos, however, were prohibited from land ownership and required to pay tribute to the owners of seignorial estates, including higher in-kind payments than imposed on Christian peasants³ (Molina, Luis, and del Carmen Veas Arteseros 2009, 104; Torró 2009). Moreover, Mudejares and Moriscos were tied to the land through mobility and residence restrictions (López and Retamero 2017; Torró 2009). While various goods were paid as feudal taxes or tribute (e.g. grains, chickens, garlic, onion, lamb, linen yarn, olive oil, fruits), these levies limited colonized peasants’ capacity to farm and feed themselves (Torró 2009).

Sugar cane monocropping in Andalus, which relied on salaried laborers, refining technology and infrastructure, and rented fields, was driven by the investment of capital from seignorial land rents (la Parra López 1995; Moreno Moreno 2020) and from Genoese and other European merchants (Galloway 1977, 192–193; Pérez Vidal 1973, 41–44). Expanded sugar monocropping replaced polyculture by forcing the peasant sharecroppers – notably dispossessed Moriscos with limited mobility (Torró 2009; Trillo San José 2004) – to produce cane⁴ (Galloway 1977; Pérez Vidal 1973). By the mid-1500s, the Morisco population supplied most labor for Andalus sugar (Malpica Cuello 1990, 158). This production fell sharply in the late 1500s (Pérez Vidal 1973) due to the Morisco expulsion and lower costs in new colonies. Meanwhile, monocrop diversity was thinned; traditional sugar cane varieties in Andalus may have been ‘wiped out’ by the Atlantic and American varieties (Fábregas García 2018, 321).

Enslaved North and Sub-Saharan Africans were made to work primarily in urban activities in Andalus (Phillips 2013), with their labor directed secondarily to agriculture. Slavery was present though uncommon in Andalus sugar production and processing (Fábregas García 2018, 321). Nonetheless, the region's notable slave labor and oppressive conditions (Fábregas García 2018, 321–322; Pérez Vidal 1973; Phillips 2013, 114–115) were influential as ‘the connection between slavery and sugar had been planted [in Andalus], setting the groundwork for the plantation system in the Americas’ (Phillips 2013, 115).

Diverse peasant food biota and foodways were entangled precariously with expanded estate monocropping and livestock herds. Descriptions of diverse plants and their food uses – peasant produced-and-consumed plants and animals as well as those in trade and tribute – were often more extensive in Arabic texts than later compilations (Bermejo, Esteban, and Sánchez 1998, 20). Continued polycultures, which included extensive tree intercropping(García Sánchez 2011), facilitated the development of new variants through grafting (García Sánchez 2019; Trillo San Jose 2005). Diverse food biota persisted to a large degree in Andalus (de Herrera [1513] 1818), mainly through the subaltern labor and knowledge of women and men. 195 cultivated food sources were detailed in the late 1500s (Trillo San José 1996, 118), though the pressing precarit under Castillian colonialism is presumed to have pressured the affordance limits of this production (Trillo San Jose 2005, 17, 179).

Cultivators’ own differentiation of the non-human, multi-species mélange, as distinct from expanded monocropping, provided soil fertility management through crop rotations with diverse nitrogen-fixing food legumes and extensive agrosilvopastoralism. Leguminous chickpea or garbanzo, lentil, fava bean, field pea, lupine, and grass pea were typically rotated with wheat, barley, rye, and sorghum (de Herrera [1513] 1818) and possible others (e.g. hyacinth bean and sesame). Andalus colonial networks from Latin America subsequently incorporated maize, potato, squash, common bean, lima bean, and scarlet runner beans among other American food plants in the 1500s and 1600s. Fertility-enhancing agrosilvopastoral systems, which utilized farm animals and tree biota such as oaks, walnuts, chestnuts, and acacia (algarrobo) (de Herrera [1513] 1818), were similarly extensive in Andalus.

Colonial Andalus landscapes contained contrasting affordances of the mostly dry-farmed uplands and the intensively produced valleys created in earlier Islamic landscape management and categorization (e.g. Al-Awwam 1988). Castilian land grabs bridged these landscapes (e.g. deploying fiats that forcibly displaced Islamic populations to designated uplands following Morisco uprisings; Retamero 2021). Yet, rainfed lands (tierras de secano or de sembradura) were also allocated to colonial settlers for dedicated cultivation of cereals, vineyards, and olives (Guinot Rodríguez 2018; Martínez Enamorado 2010; Segura Graíño 1982). Repartimiento documents contrasted these lands with the irrigated valley bottoms and terraces (bancales) where settler families grew a greater variety of crops (e.g, mulberry, Armenian plum, carob tree, plum, lemon, quince, walnut, olive, and grape) usually in smaller plots (Guinot Rodríguez 2018; Martínez Enamorado 2010; Segura Graíño 1982; see also Agresta 2021; Kirchner 2021, 17). Colonial integration of the differentiated landscapes (Torró 2021) weakened as new deforestation, overgrazing, and erosion degraded the uplands (Butzer 2005). Moreover, new land-use conflicts emerged as Castilian wheat growers and confederated sheep herders expanded to Andalus (Agresta 2021; Dunmire 2004, 19–20). Consequently, alfalfa (an earlier Islamic introduction) was expanded in valleys as livestock feed (Trillo San José 1996, 118). Landscape differentiation and dynamics thus entangled with other forces, as described above, in the Plantationocene monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies of Andalus.

V. Results: colonial monocropping and subaltern strategies in Coastal Peru (AD 1300–1800)

Pre-European, indigenous agriculture and food influenced the ensuing colonial transformations of coastal Peru. Between AD 1300 and 1532, the agri-food systems of the Chimu and Inca empires provided diets of diverse indigenous plant components (e.g. maize, common and lima beans, sweet potato, chili pepper, squash) including trees (e.g. guanabana, avocado, lucuma). Diets were similar to the smaller polities elsewhere in coastal Peru (Cutright 2015). The varied diet is consistent with evidence of fields of diverse sizes (Caramanica et al. 2020; Dillehay, Kolata, and Ortloff 2023) that do not suggest large-scale monocropping. Multi-site studies highlight that diverse-food strategies in coastal Peru during the AD 1300–1532 period also featured indigenous Andean potatoes, other tuber- and root-bearing crops (manioc, sweet potato, yacon, achira, and ulluco), tree and perennial crops (chirimoya, pacae, papaya, and pineapple), and less-known but important food biota (e.g. cannavalia beans; Towle 2017). These foods were influenced by pre-1300 regional exchanges that had brought dozens of indigenous American crops to coastal Peru (e.g. maize, common beans), as shown by single-line arrows in Figure 1.

After the 1532 invasion, Castilian colonizers developed a series of monocrops (wheat, livestock, sugar cane, cotton) in coastal Peru (Figure 4) that marginalized yet did not replace the diverse food biota of pre-1532 indigenous cultures and civilizations (see below). Similarities of coastal Peru monocrops to Andalus were fashioned through the common background characteristics of Castilian conquest and agrarian colonization (e.g. colonial land and labor institutions described below), defining crop and livestock movements, and shared environmental affordances of biota and colonial landscapes.

Figure 4. Study region of Coastal Peru and surrounding areas.

The role of monocrops as political-economic drivers began by the 1540s with single-crop wheat fields in coastal Peru (Bell 2018, 40; Table 3; Appendix 1c). Progeny of seeds said to have been brought by Beatriz Salcedo (a colonial Moorish woman), wheat became widely monocropped under irrigation in coastal valleys around Lima and elsewhere (Figure 4). The monocropped wheat was shipped to regional and long-distance markets (e.g. Panama and Chile, Cárdenas Ayaimpoma 2014). At the same time, large cattle and sheep herds (notably the Merino breed from Andalus) proliferated (Cobo [1639] 1935; Cobo 1956). Specialized livestock production used alfalfa – a North Africa-via-Andalus biotic component – as a principal feed (Macera 1966). Wheat monocropping in coastal Peru later declined in the 1600s and 1700s due to several factors (Bell 2018).

Table 3. Overview of expanded monocropping and livestock in Coastal Peru, 1300–1800 (additional details in Appendix 1c).

Crop or livestock type	Precursor conditions	Summary of expanded monocropping	Primary monocropping	Examples of key places
Wheat	Irrigated pre-European crops (e.g. maize)	Monocropped on estates	Mid-1500s to mid-1600s	Valleys of Lima and coast between Piura and Moquegua
Sugar Cane	On previous wheat fields	First expanded in mid-1500s and 1600s	Mid-1500s to late 1700s; plateaued in late 1700s	North and central coast (e.g. Piura, Lambayeque, valleys); as far south as Nazca
Cotton	Indigenous cotton was widely grown	Expanded in the 1700s, becoming a key commercial crop	Limited before 1700s, then expanded	North coast (Piura) and south to Tacna
Vineyards	Garden-scale grape production initially	Intensive wine grape production replaced by sugar cane	Late 1500s – late 1700s	South coast (Arequipa, Moquegua)
Asian Rice	Subaltern growing near Lima as an alternative to wheat	Sugar cane crisis in late 1700s prompted intensified rice cultivation	Late 1700s to early 1800s	North coastal valleys (e.g. Trujillo)
Cattle	Abundant by mid-1500s, including feral livestock	Large land grants in mid-1700s extended livestock production	Large-scale extensive by 1550s through 1700s	Lima, Mala, Piura, Huaura
Sheep	Sheep in Peru since the 1500s	By mid-1500s, large sheep herds on north coast	Mid 1500s	Lambayeque

As wheat declined, the monocropping of sugar cane expanded in coastal Peru (Flores Galindo 1984, 21–29; Pérez-Mallaína 2000; Dargent 2017). Colonial networks introduced Caribbean cane varieties (Klaren 2005) such as ‘mixed race’ (caña criolla) or ‘indigenous,’ (caña de la tierra) that highlighted colonial distinctions, as did the connotation of azúcar pagano (‘pagan sugar’; López Morales 1990, 197). Large plantations in coastal valleys near Trujillo and Lambayeque (Figure 4) produced more than 400,000 pounds of sugar annually (Cushner 1980, 123). Cotton became a colonial monocrop in coastal Peru in the late 1700s (Table 3). This new ‘Egyptian cotton’ (Alfaro y Lariva 1870) combined ancestral lines traced to Andalus and the Mediterranean as well as to indigenous American cotton that circulated globally after 1500 (Sauer 1993). Producers could sow cotton in soils depleted of nutrients by sugar cane (Watson 1974, 15). Olives and bananas were intercropped or produced in small- to medium-scale monocropped fields (Cushner 1980; Flores-Zúñiga 2008; Gade 2015; Keith 1976; Vega de Cáceres 1996).

Booming sugar cane monocrops in coastal Peru were capitalized by major colonial-institutional sources (e.g. the Jesuits) as well as urban and rural elites (especially after Jesuit expulsion in 1767; Chocano 2020, 42–49; see also Cushner 1980; Vergara 1995). Capital in this sugar monocropping also derived from the widespread colonial land grantees (encomenderos) that had specialized in wheat monocropping. Common Spanish colonial institutions that underwrote pervasive land grabs – including the encomienda, composición de tierra, and repartimiento – propelled widespread monocropping. Built on Castilian precursors, these colonial land institutions were used to dispossess indigenous common lands (Cárdenas Ayaimpoma 2014, 139) and regularize the individual lands of indigenous households (composiciones de tierras; AGN 1594–1597; AGN 1594). In conjunction with mercedes grants and semi-feudal hacienda estates, these Spanish imperial institutions unleashed a surge of colonial monocropping by usurping extensive swaths of indigenous land.

Labor for monocropping was channeled partly through Castilian colonial institutions that controlled indigenous people (e.g. encomienda tribute), enslaved Africans, criollo peasants (mestizos), and ‘freed slaves’ subjected to colonial institutions. Encomienda control of copious appropriated labor and land underwrote the transition to monocropping in coastal Peru, thus demonstrating a direct tie to this institutional cornerstone of Castilian colonialism already applied in Andalus. By the 1570s, indigenous labor was being extracted not only by the massive dispossessions of the colonial land-grab institutions but also by the imperial resettlement fiats of the reducciones (forced population nucleation, likewise already in use in Andalus) and other widespread illegal appropriations. Direct and violent expropriation of indigenous labor was commonly used in each of the monocrops (e.g. cotton; Palomino, Guillén, and Maticorena Estrada 1996).

Populations of enslaved Africans on monocrop plantations in coastal Peru expanded amid the catastrophic mortality devastating indigenous population due to disease and exploitation. People of African origin, nearly all enslaved persons and a small portion of ‘Free Blacks’ concentrated in the Lima region, numbered similar to colonial Spaniards in the late 1500s (Aldana Rivera 1988, 131). The enslaved persons were mostly traded from other colonial entrepôts following enslavement in West Africa (Figure 1). Enslaved Moors from Andalus and North Africa and Andalus were termed ‘white slaves’ in Peru (Bartet 2005, 45). By the late 1500s, these groups of enslaved people of African descent were a major labor source throughout coastal Peru (Cushner 1980; Lockhart 1994; Palomino, Guillén, and Maticorena Estrada 1996). Many worked on monocropping estates (Espinoza Claudio 2019) while others labored on small farms and were ‘rented out’ for the rapid expansion of livestock herding (Lockhart 1994). Moors and Moriscos formed important colonial populations in coastal Peru (Bartet 2005; Manrique 1993, 556; Vega 1991) that became recognized in indigenous cultures (Zimmerer 1996). Additionally, Spaniards from Andalus representing diverse social ranks were predominant in the colonizing population of Peru (Vega 1991).

Precarious entanglements of small-scale, diverse-food strategies were wrought with colonial monocropping and accompanying transformations. A general model of this entanglement was illustrated by indigenous peasants on the large encomiendas in the 1500s in coastal Peru. While producing their own small plots and farm animals (Cárdenas Ayaimpoma 2014; Lockhart 1994), the bulk of their land, labor, and production supplied encomendero tribute that was channeled to monocropping. The capacities of subaltern diverse-food strategies, including the labor and knowledge of women cultivators, were therefore entangled prodigiously yet precariously with the rise of monocropping.

These entanglements became varied and widespread as subaltern groups struggled to eke out food and livelihood strategies in colonial Peru. By the mid-1500s, the cultivation of diverse populations in the Lima valleys created ‘an impressive garden spot, full of closely spaced small holdings’ (Lockhart 1994, 186). Land access often occurred through rentals and sharecropping that included numerous persons of indigenous and African descent (Cárdenas Ayaimpoma 2014, 159, 162–163). Subaltern subsistence crops occupied fields and gardens in haciendas and around urban areas that combined with market and exchange production (subaltern ‘relative specialization’ that was widespread in colonial Peru; see Chocano 2020). Such fields and gardens were combined with crops and livestock concealed from colonial tribute extraction (on escape crops and fugitive landscapes in the colonial Andes see Zimmerer 2015; Zimmerer and Bell 2015).

Biotic movements and affordances further entangled monocropping and subaltern agriculture and food in coastal Peru. Extensive colonial trade and migration networks connecting to Andalus, Africa, and elsewhere fueled the widespread mobility of food biota (Gade 2015). Early voyages directed by the Castilian Crown were among the most documented biotic movements to the Caribbean and Latin America, with the second in 1493 including notable Euro-Mediterranean mainstays, such as wheat, olives, and wine grapes. Subsequent monocrops, such as sugar cane, Egyptian cotton, Asian rice, and oranges were similarly transferred by trade and migration, often via the Canary Islands and Caribbean. These early Plantationocene biota then passed colonial waystations, principally Panama, to the primary ports of Peru, especially Callao. Such biotic networks transporting crops and livestock were partially differentiated between those furnishing colonial monocrops and subaltern seed and stock (Gade 2015).

In addition, indigenous diverse food biota that had expanded during the Chimu and Inca empires in the pre-1532 period became vital to survival strategies of the subaltern populations of coastal Peru. These resilient indigenous elements that became culturally widespread were referred to as de la tierra (‘of the land’) in the post-1532 Spanish colonial lexicon. The colonial importance of indigenous diverse foods was reflected in the Quechua-language idea of kawsay (‘Living Well’) that came to indicate the subalterns’ customary, moral expectations of adequate food and resource access (Mejía Xesspe 1931; Zimmerer 2012).

The post-1532 food biota of coastal Peru were enhanced by movements traced to Andalus, Africa, and the Middle East (Figure 1). Numbering nearly three dozen (Table 1), most food biota moved via Andalus and the Canary Islands to the Americas including coastal Peru. Examples included garbanzo bean, lentil, spinach, honey melon, citron, banana, lemon, limes, eggplant, figs, and date (Azuar Ruiz 1998; Bermejo, Esteban, and Sánchez 1998; Cieza de León 1984; de la Vega 1976; Jiménez de la Espada 1881; Rivera et al. 2013) (Table 1). Additionally, the African foods that moved to coastal Peru included banana, lablab bean, cucumber, and watermelon. Possible further additions from Africa, though undocumented in our research to-date, were plantain, sesame, sorghum, millets, and African rice (Table 1). Grown in Africa in intercropped fields and polycultural gardens, they were transported to the Americas (Carney 2003; Watkins 2021) and, at least partly, to Peru.

Agroecological benefits and nutritious foods (e.g. legumes, vegetables, fruits, chickens, and ample others) were furnished by the diverse food biota adopted after 1532 in subaltern farming and food spaces in coastal Peru. This subaltern production incorporated assemblages of food biota that tiered with new labor-saving elements such as tree crops from Andalus (e.g. citrus) and Africa (e.g. plantain) to create innovative diverse-food strategies (e.g. Cieza de León 1984, 119). Combinations of diverse indigenous and new food biota were inter-mixed in dooryard and kitchen gardens that were widely used among subaltern groups. One early colonial account referred to huertas curiosamente plantadas (‘curiously planted gardens;’ published later in Jiménez de la Espada 1881, 153). Furnishing shade and soil protection, the multi-species assemblages enhanced the use of space, sunlight, and soil nutrients and elevated pest and disease resistance (Dunmire 2004).

Enslaved Africans in populations throughout coastal Peru (Macera 1966) managed these agroecological affordances to provision sustenance and, in cases, small-scale marketing. Their plots included plantation gardens adopted from West African garden, polyculture, and agroforest biota and techniques (see Carney 2003; Carney and Rosomoff 2011) that became microspaces of resistance (e.g. Piura; Espinoza Claudio 2019, 191) by fusing the diverse biota tracing to West Africa, Andalus, and indigenous elements. Further agroecological strategies were afforded by small-farm animals such as chickens and pigs. Additionally, cuy, or guinea pig, was common among indigenous people (Palomino, Guillén, and Maticorena Estrada 1996). More generally, the diverse food biota produced in coastal Peru afforded potential ‘summer crops’ and ‘winter crops’ in a single year (Cobo 1956), though this double-cropping was likely constrained by land, labor, and water limitations.

Finally, valley-and-upland landscapes contoured the agroecological affordances of monocrops and diverse-food biota through their associated water gradients. Coastal valley bottomlands were amply irrigated owing to local labor, knowledge, and organizations as well as indigenous irrigation infrastructure (Deneven 2001). The role of valley bottomlands as core settlement-and-monoculture spaces was cemented under Spanish colonialism (Zimmerer and Bell 2015), while patchworks of subaltern land use extended to the arid interfluves where intermediate areas were well suited to diverse, subaltern food biota. Landscape differentiation and dynamics of coastal Peru thus entangled with above-described elements in the Plantationocene development of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies.

VI. Discussion: entanglement and transformation in the Plantationocene

This study and its framework elucidate the Plantationocene entanglements (AD 1300–1800) that propelled the transformations of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies in Andalus (Spain) and coastal Peru. Entanglements drew on historical movements at intra- and inter-regional scales of populations and food biota. These differentiated entanglements (sensu Davis et al. 2019, 5) transformed the intersecting arcs of Plantationocene monoculture development and subaltern survival strategies. The development of our conceptual and analytical framework using comparative historical political ecology has elucidated three themes of political-ecological entanglement as integral to the early Plantationocene.

The first thematic entanglements of this framework are the closely related yet sharply differentiated pathways of colonial monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies. In Andalus and coastal Peru the historical sequences of monocropped wheat, sugar cane, and cotton (as well as specialized large-scale cattle and sheep production) were forged in the study’s sub-period of formative global Plantationocene development (AD 1450–1600). The common, minor monocrops in this pair of regions (citrus, rice, banana, indigo, wine grapes, olives) became global plantation staples elsewhere.These multiple monocropping pathways become powerful precursors of the present-day ‘global plantation’ (Uekötter 2014). Diverse foods that were enmeshed in survival, moral economy-type sustenance, and resistance (Carney 2021; Scott 2010; Zimmerer 2012) anchored a plurality of sub-altern agri-food systems and guided affordances that persisted precariously amid expanding colonial monocrops.

This first entanglement demonstrated the relationally transformative pathways of monocropping and subaltern diverse-food strategies (Zimmerer, Rojas, and Hosse 2022). The latter were not merely derivative artifacts of historical or political-economic processes nor were they singularly agential. Affordances – encompassing political-ecological and landscape dimensions – have enabled subaltern groups to draw upon diverse food biota, albeit often tenuously, in continued contestations. Combined concepts of entanglement and affordances guide our analysis of political-ecological relatedness-and-differences of monocrops and diverse food biota. The perspective of this first entanglement highlights how both the monocropping of imperial colonialism and the strategies of precarious subaltern survival were intimately and mutually embedded in Plantationocene developments. It offers insight into differentiated non-human-related worlds of the Plantationocene to advance conceptually beyond the generalized notions of the ‘multi-species assemblages’ of subaltern agroecology or the ‘industrial ecologies’ of plantation monocultures.

The second entanglement comprised the historical spatial movements embedded in the agri-food systems of Andalus and coastal Peru together with extensive connections to Africa and Asia. People, institutions, power configurations, and food biota were moved via myriad colonial connections in both monocropping (e.g. monocropped biota and colonial land and labor grabs) and subaltern diverse-food strategies. Influential long- and medium-distance movements, as well as local scales, linked the colonial networks of people and biota of Andalus and coastal Peru to North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia in addition to Europe. Similarly, this study elucidates the networked entanglements of survival-enabling, subaltern foods (Table 4) – a fused, portmanteau of indigenous diverse-food biota incorporating elements from Andalus, indigenous America, Africa, and the Middle East – via non-local networks. The multiscalar, diasporic movements of the Plantationocene (Barua 2023; McKittrick 2013) thus contributed to the differentiated human social dynamics and non-human assemblages of monocropping and diverse subaltern agri-food systems.

Table 4. Andalus and Coastal Peru: shared thematic entanglements in the early Plantationocene (AD 1300-1800)

Thematic entanglement	Andalus	Coastal Peru
Political ecological edges of the Atlantic World	Easterly edge of Spain's colonial empire (previously southern edge of Castilian colonialism)	Western edge of Spain's Atlantic empire (previously coastal edge of Cusco-based Inca empire)
Colonialization and colonial institutions predominated, 1300–1800	Castilian colonization followed by early modern and national rule of the Spanish state	Spanish colonization (1532–1800) preceded by Chimu and Inca (1300–1532)
Influence of powerful pre-1300 colonial political ecologies	Islamic colonization, earlier Roman influence	Indigenous Chimu and Inca imperial rule
Monocropping and specialized livestock	Wheat, sugar cane, cotton, cattle, sheep (partial: vineyards, olives, indigo, oranges, saffron)	Wheat, sugar cane, cotton, cattle, sheep (partial: vineyards, indigo, oranges, saffron)
Racialized labor regimes in monocropping	Morisco labor predominant in sugar cane by 1500s; enslaved Africans important but minor	Labor of indigenous communities (1532-); enslaved Africans and mestizos (by mid- and late-1500s)
Subaltern agrobiodiversity and food systems	Garbanzo, lentil, spinach, melon, plantain, lemon, lime, eggplant, fig, date	Garbanzo, lentil, spinach, melon, plantain, lemon, lime, eggplant, fig, date
Influence of aridity	Contrasting valley-upland landscapes (moderate aridity, 400-650 mm/yr precipitation)	Contrasting valley-upland landscapes (extreme aridity, 100-200 mm/yr precipitation)

Illustrating this second entanglement, Castilian colonialism historically propelled both the convergence and divergence of agri-food systems across global sites in the Plantationocene through multi-scale spatial movements. As shown, the early developments, which were evident in the 1300s and 1400s (Andalus under contesting Castilian and Islamic rulers, coastal Peru under Chimu and Inka rulers), had occurred with scant evidence of large-field monocultures. Such early legacies illuminate how Castilian colonial institutions and political economy enrolled the affordances of crops, livestock, and resources in the notable expansions of monocropping beginning in the 1400s in Andalus and in the 1500s in coastal Peru.

In the third entanglement, subaltern agrobiodiversity countering the existential threat of colonial monocropping (Carney 2021; Watkins 2021) was entwined pluralistically with the survival, livelihoods, and landscapes of diverse subaltern groups and food biota. Indigenous people and enslaved Africans in coastal Peru, as well as Mudejares and Moriscos and local Christian peasants in Andalus, differed in their diverse-food biota. Though varied and distinct, their livelihood dynamics appeared to overlap in the exchange of diverse seeds, livestock, and local knowledge. For example, Peru's indigenous people, enslaved Africans, and criollo peasants relied on certain similarities of food biota, therefore suggesting seed-network connectivity for fields, gardens, and small-livestock integration. Moreover, subaltern diverse-food strategies extending to upland and interfluve landscapes in Andalus and coastal Peru upended the Spanish conquest's two-part geographic model of non-valley spaces as wastelands (despoblados; Cieza de León 1984, 119) that was widely imposed and resisted in early colonial Latin America (Zimmerer and Bell 2015).

This study contributes to a trenchant critique of the “Columbian Exchange” as overlooking subaltern agency (Carney 2003, 2021; Watkins 2021; see earlier multi-species approach in Carney and Rosomoff 2011). We center our analysis on multiple diverse subaltern populations and dozens of diverse food biota and regions that are not a focus of previous research from a post-Columbian Exchange perspective, Similarly, we provide a novel, much-needed advance to this perspective by interweaving the myriad role of colonial institutions as a main fabric entwining subaltern foods and diverse-food strategies across long-distance movements. Here, one principal advance is to illustrate the dynamics of the multiplicity of differentiated food biota, production spaces, and subaltern groups. This advance builds upon and yet differs from the thematically singular analysis of escape crops or fugitive landscapes (Scott 2010; Zimmerer 2015), singular niches (secondary forest, plantation garden, agri-forest), or individual vegetal protagonists such as mikania, African rice, or oil palm (Barua 2023; Carney 2003, 2021; Watkins 2021).

Additionally, our engagement with alternatives offers specific suggestions to de-romanticize Plantationocene alternatives and highlight precarious subaltern struggles (Wolford 2021). Diverse food biota were commonly utilized by multiple groups (e.g. enslaved Africans and indigenous people in coastal Peru). This perspective complements yet differs from within-group perspectives (e.g. within enslaved African societies of the Caribbean and Brazil, respectively; Carney 2021; Watkins 2021). Capacity for between-group exchanges of diverse plants and livestock could have gained importance with intensified subaltern marginalization during the expanding Plantationocene. Between- and potentially cross-group seed networks, for example, would have provided food biota to enhance subaltern livelihoods and survival (Capparelli et al. 2005) with affordances suited to their marginalized landscapes (Rignall 2016).

Finally, we may outline related avenues of future research. Irrigation technologies and infrastructure in regions such as Andalus and coastal Peru have been globally paramount yet contested as Plantionocene developments of large-scale water systems and potential small-scale irrigation alternatives. Similarly, the development of large-scale, Plantationocene livestock production has been entangled with small-scale and diverse animal assemblages. Other related research themes include before-and-after studies of Plantationocene impacts (distinct from the focus on entanglements in this study) and Plantationocene alternatives (addressed here as implications).

VII. Conclusion

Like microbes and viruses – where knowledges and practices of their entanglement (e.g. human-wildlife and urban-rural interactions) are vital even in regimes of severe disentanglement (e.g. masks, quarantine) (Voelkner 2022) – Plantationocene monocropping and subaltern diverse food strategies have entailed multiple entanglements that continue today and that urge in-depth research. These differentiated entanglements have fueled the transformations of increasingly expansive and destructive Plantationocene monocropping as well as the diverse-food strategies of multiple, marginalized subaltern groups. We conclude that colonial monocropping and subaltern agrobiodiversity were both extensively entangled and definitively differentiated in the formative phases of the Plantationocene that occurred in Andalus (Spain) and coastal Peru between 1300 and 1800. These Plantationocene pathways arose through the effects of Castilian colonialism, struggles of several subaltern populations, multi-scale geographic movements, influential historical precursors, and the affordances provided by diverse and partially shared suites of differentiated food biota and landscapes.

Finally, our conclusion offers implications for current agri-food alternatives. Dynamic historical entanglements – rather than presentist assumptions or equilibrium ecologies – characterize Plantationocene pathways and alternatives. Here we highlight many diverse foods whose agrobiodiversity is vital to current alternatives (e.g. peasant or indigenous agri-food systems) that trace to the transformations of Plantationocene histories and geographies. Affordance characteristics of diverse food biota take shape through multi-scale, non-local entanglements. Place-specific agri-food systems in this study were influenced by nonlocal connectivity that continue to condition diverse-food alternatives. Finally, the coloniality of racialized, precarious labor remains common in alternative agriculture (e.g. examples of organic and ecological agriculture or Protected Denomination of Origin production). The ongoing entanglement of diverse-food alternatives with colonial-type labor urges social justice approaches. Together, these insights support the use of entanglement and affordance concepts to analyze the current alternatives that characterize and give hope in the Plantationocene.

Acknowledgements

This research was initiated in 2018 with funding to the first author by the Spain Fulbright Commission (2017–2019) that is gratefully acknowledged. It benefitted from the logistical guidance and scholarly insights of Yolanda Jimenez Olivencia and Carmen Trillo San José at the Universidad de Granada. Initial results were presented in 2019 at the International Congress of Environmental History Organizations in Florianópolis, Brazil, where feedback was provided by Judith Carney, Chris Duvall, Claudia Leal, Karl Offen, Richard Rosomoff, and Case Watkins. Funds for the second phase of research were provided by the E. Willard & Ruby S. Miller professorship (2019–2022) in the Department of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. José Luis Rodriguez Toledo assisted with the bibliographic and archival research in Peru. Stephanie O. Yépez made the maps. Magdalena Chocano shared insights. Research project and paper development between 2017 and 2023 benefitted from ongoing discussion with Medora Ebersole. Presentation of the near-final version of the paper received helpful feedback at the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers in January 2023.

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Karl S. Zimmerer

Karl S. Zimmerer is Professor of Environment-Society Geography, Rural Sociology, and Ecology and directs the GeoSyntheSES Collaboratory at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the political and social ecologies of food, agriculture, biodiversity, urbanization/migration, and climate change. His current projects address monocultures and diverse food in the Western Mediterranean (1990-present) (Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene), landscape connectivity and resilience in agri-food systems in Spain (Agricultural Systems, 2022), sustainability and resilience of informal seed systems in an 11-country study of poverty, precarity and peri-urban spaces of the Global South, immigrant farmworkers in peri-urban Spain, and present-day food strategies and biodiversity-nutrition dynamics of Indigenous and peasant communities. Since 2016 his research is allied with the Granada-based Foodscapes Project and the Instituto de Investigación Nutritional in Peru. Karl's current projects include collaborators at Penn State, in Peru, and at the University of Montpellier, CIRAD, and CNRS in France. He is Editor-in-Chief of Urban Agriculture.

Ramzi M. Tubbeh

Ramzi M. Tubbeh is a Lecturer at Lincoln University in Canterbury, New Zealand, with expertise in political ecology, agrarian political economy, and postcolonial studies. He has been appointed as a postdoctoral scholar at the GeoSyntheSES Collaboratory at Pennsylvania State University where he undertook research for this study. His areas of research include landbased rural livelihoods, water governance, conservation, agrobiodiversity and climate change, with a geographical focus on coastal, mountain, and rainforest landscapes in the tropical Andes. His recent work is focused on (1) indigenous communal land titling and forest conservation programs; (2) the impacts of large hydraulic infrastructures and associated water governance systems on agricultural landscapes and livelihoods; and (3) the relationship between community-based irrigation systems, landscape knowledge, and smallholding farmers' resilience.

Martha G. Bell

Martha G. Bell is an Associate Professor of Geography and Environment in the Department of Humanities at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Her research focuses on Peru and the Andes, which she studies from a historical political ecological perspective, with publications on colonial agriculture and water use. Her most recent project considers local and cultural knowledge production on disasters in the context of El Niño flooding in the coastal and upland areas of Piura, Peru. Other recent research analyzes the expansion of intensive commercial agriculture in the context of surrounding geographic spaces of natural areas and smallholder agriculture. Martha has also collaborated on interdisciplinary projects studying historical landscape models, historical linguistics and mapping, and urban agriculture. She currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Latin American Geography.

Notes

1 Andalus is a regional term for this territory since between 1300 and 1800 it overlapped with the Arabic designation of Al-Andalus and later that of Andalucía in early modern Spain. Use of the term Andalus highlights continuities during the 1300–1800 period including diverse peasant groups (see text).

2 Mudejares were Muslims allowed to stay in conquered territories. They were known as Moriscos after Christian conversion, often by force, though often more apparent than real.

3 In the Kingdom of Valencia, place-specific taxes for settler-peasants rarely exceeded a fifth of the harvest, but Mudejares and Moriscos paid roughly one third to one half of harvest (Torró 2009).

4 Compulsory sugar cane sharecropping existed in Nasrid nobles’ estates prior to Castilian colonization (Trillo San José 2004; Lagardere 1995).