The missing lens: feminist perspectives on agro-food system transformation in Vietnam and Indonesia

Against the background of climate change and the international discourse of global agro-food systems transformation, we show how a feminist perspective provides a more gender and power sensitive lens for understanding contemporary agro-food policies in the Global South. Using recent agricultural policies in Vietnam and Indonesia as case studies, we adopt a Feminist Political Ecology perspective and apply Parto Teherani-Krönner’s meal politics approach to reveal the shortcomings of disembodied, supposedly gender-neutral and technocratic conceptualizations of agro-food policies. We argue that predominantly productivist and commodification-oriented policy goals and narratives give precedence to technocratic knowledge under the guise of professionalization while devaluing the role of embodied, relational knowledge in agro-food system transformation. Furthermore, the linear conceptualization of the farmer as male translates into unequal gender relations and other dimensions of social inequality in terms of resource access and control, as well as a neglect of socio-ecological care work and meal security.