Feminist Agroecology and Cannibal Capitalism: Boundary struggles in the Agri-Food System

Agroecology has emerged as a prominent framework for rethinking food systems in response to ecological crisis, social inequality and agrarian transformation. While sociological and political ecology scholarship has highlighted its potential as an alternative to industrial agriculture, less attention has been paid to what agroecology implies for capitalism as a social order. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the global agri-food system through Nancy Fraser’s theory of capitalism as a cannibalistic social order. Building on Fraser’s multidimensional framework, the article argues that the agri-food system constitutes a paradigmatic site of capitalist cannibalism, where ecological degradation, the erosion of social reproduction, exploitation and expropriation, and the capture of political power converge. It then examines feminist agroecology as a boundary struggle across these four dimensions. The central claim is that the tension between feminist agroecology and capitalist food regimes is structural rather than normative. Insofar as capitalist agriculture is organised around commodification and competitive accumulation, socioecological practices oriented toward collective reproduction and ecological regeneration encounter systemic limits. Rather than a reformist pathway toward sustainability, feminist agroecology points toward forms of decommodification and democratic governance that cannot be fully stabilised within capitalist social relations.