ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the utility of agro-toxic heritage as a conceptual artefact for understanding practices, narratives, and heritage struggles, centred on toxicity in agriculture production in the Southwest of Uruguay, one of the most anthropized regions in the countryside. Hegemonic narratives have historically minimised the toxicity of the dominant way of production, which is intensive in the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilisers and veterinary medicinal products. Nevertheless, for the last decade, there is increasing visibility and recognition by inhabitants in both rural and suburban territories of consequential environmental and embodied effects. Agro-toxic heritage becomes the by-product of bioaccumulation of pesticides and nutrients in soils, waters and organic tissues, with negative effects – not legally clearly accepted – on personal, animal and ecosystem health. The increasing recognition of this toxic heritage has also become a claim that mobilises reactions – still fragmented – facing multiple pressures and dependencies determined by agribusiness as a way of life. This heritage is experienced by farmers as part of their own inter-generational legacy, both from grandparents that established and consolidated the farms to sons and daughters that are currently running them, and from that generation to the youngest that will run the farms in the future or are already joining the family business. The struggle is present in these heritages.
