Mountain Agriculture for Global Markets: The Case of Greenhouse Floriculture in Ecuador

Mountain agriculture has been conceptualized in terms of altitudinal zones, verticality, and agroecosystems, but an alternative framework is that of adaptive dynamics, conceptualizing farming in terms of choice between options based on optimizing returns in different frameworks of rational decision making in different production zones. In this framework, production zones are not defined solely in terms of altitude but also in terms of soil, slope, and access to irrigation. A recent option in the irrigated production zone has been greenhouse floriculture, which has become one of the most globally competitive agricultural exports in equatorial mountains. In Ecuador, greenhouse floriculture expanded in the 1990s partly in response to favorable trade agreements but also due to diffusion of technologies from multiple sources and local entrepreneurship. Interviews with various actors and fieldwork provide details on greenhouse adaptive strategies and suggest that this agroindustrial activity has proven unusually resilient to changes in global trade patterns and changes in climate. It has provided an option for employment that has stemmed outmigration and encouraged some immigration of labor. At the same time, there are concerns regarding impacts on water resources and regarding pesticide impacts. Excessively static or ecosystemicist conceptions of mountain environments and agricultural strategies fail to anticipate the full range of possibilities for development in the diverse production zones of high-altitude regions. These possibilities also help to contest assertions about the inevitable decline of mountain agriculture in the face of modernization and globalization.