Although Voluntary Sustainability Standards have gained traction in promoting more sustainable food production and value chains, their impacts are not always conclusive. Building on actor-network theory, our aim was to analyze the translation of sustainability ideals promoted by the Sustainability Rice Platform (SRP) proponents into grounded agricultural practices and their outcomes on various dimensions of sustainability. To this end, we used a mixed-method and multi-scale approach that combined analysis of SRP governance documents and implementation tools, and a detailed case study conducted in Kampong Thom province, Cambodia. Fieldwork included participant observation, in-depth interviews with SRP proponents, semi-structured interviews with farmers and local stakeholders (n = 57), and quantitative assessment of SRP sustainability outcomes based on a randomized controlled survey of households (n = 275). Our findings underscore exclusionary outcomes in SRP processes, namely the consolidation of hegemonic positions within the supply chain and the limitation of smallholder farmers’ autonomy in decision-making and implementation. Additionally, the paper reveals the absence of impacts of SRP farming practices on the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. We argue that sustainability, or the lack thereof, is instead a contingent outcome of local agrarian circumstances shaped by historically embedded agrarian dynamics. Our paper contributes to ongoing discussions on agricultural innovations and cautions against solutions that do not tackle the political cause of unsustainable development.
