Food or flowers? Contested transformations of community food security and water use priorities under new legal and market regimes in Ecuador's highlands Patricio Mena-V  asconez a, * , Rutgerd Boelens a, b , Jeroen Vos a a Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Wageningen, The Netherlands b CEDLA Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, and Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 2 February 2015 Received in revised form 14 February 2016 Accepted 21 February 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Food sovereignty Irrigation conflicts Water rights Commoditisation Flower agribusiness Ecuador abstract During the past three decades, the Pisque watershed in Ecuador's Northern Andes has become the country's principal export-roses producing area. Recently, a new boom of local smallholders have established small rose greenhouses and joined the flower-export business. This has intensified water scarcity and material/discursive conflicts over water use priorities: water to defend local-national food sovereignty or production for export. This paper examines how including peasant flower farms in the capitalist dream e driven by a ‘mimetic desire’ and copying large-scale capitalist flower-farm practices and technologies e generates new intra-community conflicts over collective water rights, extending traditional class-based water conflicts. New allocation principles in Ecuador's progressive 2008 Consti- tution and 2014 Water Law prioritising food production over flowers' industrial water use are unlikely to benefit smallholder communities. Instead, decision-making power for peasant communities and their water users' associations on water use priority would enable water user prioritization according to smallholders' own preferences. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the early 1980s, large farms with national and international financing started growing roses for export in Ecuador's highlands, especially in some northern inter-Andean valleys. Since then, they have become key stakeholders in the geopolitical landscape. This boom started amidst a globalising, neoliberal environment, taking advantage of exceptional biophysical and societal features (Gasselin, 2001; Brassel and Montenegro, 2011; Harari et al., 2011). Rose agribusinesses can be seen as the latest player in a history where local communities have struggled to keep their irrigation water rights and other crucial resources against powerful external actors, i.e., national (urban) and international investors (Breilh, 2007; Guerra, 2012; Hidalgo, 2015). Most large-scale flower farms are built on haciendas (remaining colonial-style estates), which commonly have water concessions and for centuries grew Andean crops and pastures. While acknowledging that flowers provide jobs, local communities have expressed concern about the impact on local water security and food sovereignty of a non-edible, individually-produced commod- ity, with high water demand, for the international market (Soper, 2013; see also Anderson, 2013). Flower firms retort that rose agri- businesses have modernised the regions where they flourish, and enhanced local purchasing power; thus, floriculture has contrib- uted significantly, albeit indirectly, to improving local food avail- ability (Zapatta and Mena-V asconez, 2012). The tense social context has been largely understood as a con- flict between producing large-scale commercial flowers for export vs. local production for food security and sovereignty, a conflict that has included e as shown by Hidalgo (2010) e overt situations involving bribing, water theft, and mobilisations (see also Soper, 2013). However, the recent boom of very small rose farms managed by peasant families has rendered this dichotomy inade- quate. Some local households have tried to follow the promises of modernisation, replicating capitalist technologies and practices, and now engage in the risky endeavours of export farming. This phenomenon intensifies water use for export crops in a region already suffering from water scarcity, and significantly adds * Corresponding author. E-mail address: patricio.menavasconez@wur.nl (P. Mena-V asconez). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.02.011 0743-0167/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Rural Studies 44 (2016) 227e238