Abstract

This article analyzes agroindustrial expansion in the province of Manabí, Ecuador, focusing on the yellow maize supply chain and the integration of smallholder family farming. Drawing on a critical approach to power, the article argues that this expansion is sustained not only through visible mechanisms such as dispossession and violence, but also through less visible registers of power, particularly epistemic power. This form of power operates through the imposition of technoscientific knowledge and the delegitimization of local peasant knowledge, thereby creating hierarchies among different forms of knowledge—between those recognized as legitimate knowledge holders and those reduced to mere executors of the agroindustrial formula. The analysis shows that these dynamics affect not only agricultural organization and production practices but also the social, territorial, and epistemic structures of rural life. Nevertheless, spaces of friction and creative adaptation are also identified, in which small-scale producers subtly challenge the dominant knowledge regime. The article calls for a critical examination of the knowledge frameworks underpinning agroindustrial expansion, recognizing their role in shaping decisions, forms of legitimacy, and the transformation of landscapes in rural territories.

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