Living With Epidemic Plant Diseases: Colonial Plantation Regimes, the Transformation of Indigenous Foodways and De‐Peasantization
Journal
Journal of Agrarian Change
ISSN
1471-0358
1471-0366
Date Issued
2026-01-07
Author(s)
Wang, Chi‐Mao
Abstract
This article examines the entangled histories of biosecurity, colonial governance and plantation capitalism by examining the case of Taiwan's banana industry. By focusing on the impact of banana stem weevils and the more recent outbreak of Tropical Race 4 (TR4), it traces how biosecurity regimes emerged during Japanese colonial rule and evolved to sustain extractive plantation logics. Drawing on assemblage theory and the Plantationocene framework, the study thus foregrounds the various more-than-human dimensions of agrarian transformation, highlighting the ways in which scientific authority, pest control and racialized labour have interacted to co-produce ecological and social vulnerability. While smallholdings have often been framed as alternatives to industrial agriculture, this article further argues these have been central to sustaining Taiwan's banana exports, often through self-exploitation and participation in technocratic disease management on the part of smallholders. Archival records, fieldwork and multispecies analysis are also used to reveal the manner in which biosecurity, far from simply offering protection, has become a key technique of governance, thereby reshaping livelihoods, eroding Indigenous foodways and intensifying ecological fragility. The article concludes by calling for a rethinking of biosecurity beyond authoritative managerial frameworks in an attempt to situate this within the broader dynamics of racial capitalism and necropolitical governance. Taiwan's case is thereby used to provide insights into the ways in which biosecurity, plantations and smallholder systems are mutually constituted, offering lessons for developing understanding of contemporary agricultural crises in postcolonial contexts.
Subjects
banana diseases
biosecurity
colonialism
de-peasantization
Indigenous foodways
plantations
Publisher
Wiley
Type
journal article