The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in Latin America: Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay

423 Pages·2020·6.556 MB·English

by  Matilda Baraibar Norberg

GOVERNANCE, DEVELOPMENT,
AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
IN LATIN AMERICA
Argentina,, Paraguaayy aanndddd UUrruuuuggggguuuuaaaaaayyy
Matilda BBaarraaiibbaaaarrr NNoorrbbbeeeeerrrggg
Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion
in Latin America
Series Editors
Rebecka Villanueva Ulfgard
International Studies
Instituto Mora
Mexico City, Mexico
César Villanueva
Department of International Studies
Universidad Iberoamericana
Mexico City, Mexico
This series seeks to go beyond a traditional focus on the virtues of
intra-regional and inter-regional trade agreements, liberal economic pol-
icies, and a narrow security agenda in Latin America. Instead, titles deal
with a broad range of topics related to international cooperation, global
and regional governance, sustainable development and environmental
cooperation, internal displacement, and social inclusion in the context of
the Post-2015 Development Agenda—as well as their repercussions for
public policy across the region. Moreover, the series principally focuses
on new international cooperation dynamics such as South-South and tri-
angular cooperation, knowledge sharing as a current practice, and the
role of the private sector in financing international cooperation and devel-
opment in Latin America. The series also includes topics that fall outside
the traditional scope of studying cooperation and development, in this
case, (in)security and forced internal displacement, cultural cooperation,
and Buen Vivir among indigenous peoples and farmers in Latin America.
Finally, this series welcomes titles which explore the tensions and dialogue
around how to manage the imbalance between state, markets, and society
with a view to re-articulating cooperation and governance dynamics in
the 21st century.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15135
Matilda Baraibar Norberg
The Political Economy
of Agrarian Change
in Latin America
Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay
Matilda Baraibar Norberg
Department of Economic History
and International Relations
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden
Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America
ISBN 978-3-030-24585-6 ISBN 978-3-030-24586-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24586-3
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S e ’ P
erieS ditorS reface
When thinking about agriculture and economic growth in today’s Latin
America, it is unavoidable to consider the wide contrasts between tech-
nology-intensive, industrial-scale projects, on the one hand, and small
farmers with limited productivity, on the other. This development is
not unique to Latin America but is shared with many other develop-
ing regions in the world, in Africa and Southeast Asia, for example.1
The massive expansion of eucalyptus, palm plantations, or soybeans on
farming land is now commonplace in emerging economies, which has
caused significant land-use and land-cover change (LULCC). However,
despite protests from environmental and human rights activists, con-
sumer organizations, and the scientific community as regards the adverse
ecological, health-related, and social consequences of LULCC, political
action with the objective of mitigation is not addressing fully the depth
or scope of its effects on nature and human beings.
Take for example the soybean expansion. The dynamics of the global
soybean chain (but it could also be coffee beans, maize, or wheat) in the
first twenty years of this century have dramatically changed consump-
tion patterns and affected both local communities and the environment
throughout the world. Today, industrial-scale soybean producers are
joining loggers and cattle ranchers in speeding up destruction and fur-
ther fragmentation of immense, untouched territories. Now, clearing and
tilling the land for soybean production—with the effect of turning for-
ests into deserts—is only part of the challenge. Soybean cultivation puts
v
vi SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
an end to habitat for wildlife (including endangered or unknown spe-
cies), destroys ecosystems, and increases greenhouse gases that contrib-
ute to global warming. Intense use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and
herbicides (for example, glyphosate, which is a likely human carcinogen)
not only threatens the environment and animal life, but it also endangers
human health. Moreover, the soybean global production is situated in a
chain that includes labor, land, and capital, to extract as much gains as
possible (often disguised as development) at the expense of specific cul-
tures and their local habitats.
On October 1, 2018, the Director-General of the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, at
the biennial meeting of FAO’s Committee on Agriculture (COAG, 1–5
October) with representatives of governments, private sector and civil
society organizations, expressed concern that “current farming practices
have contributed to deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion and high
levels of greenhouse gas emissions”. He called for a shift to move away
from “high-input and resource-intensive farming and food systems” to
production systems that help preserving biodiversity, ecosystems, and
the environment. “To do so requires reducing the use of pesticides and
chemicals, increasing crop diversification, and improving land conserva-
tion practices,” the Director-General said.2 This is a discourse that seems
to be falling on deaf ears. In fact, it is in stark contrast with the current
tendencies in many developing countries. Brazil under the leadership of
Jair Bolsonaro will be a case in point. The case of Brazil has been well-re-
searched, but what about its southern neighbors?
Drawing on several years of research, this exceptional study by Matilda
Baraibar, The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in Latin America—
Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, offers unique insights into the
controversial and multifaceted issue of agropastoral expansion in Latin
America in the context for increasing global demand for meat and dairy
products. Through a cross-national and historical comparative approach,
the reader is invited to rethink the challenges facing the state with regard
to issues of autonomy and capacity in the soybean and beef complexes
in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Baraibar’s study is a must read for
anyone interested in capturing the historical context, modern develop-
ment, and contemporary challenges surrounding the LULCC phenome-
non in Latin America, which has become the world’s largest provider of
both “pasturelands for livestock grazing” and “croplands for high-pro-
tein vegetable feed grains, particularly soybeans” (all quotes in this
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE vii
Preface are taken from Chapter 1). Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay
display the “highest rate of export specialization in agrofood products,
which makes their economies highly dependent on the development of
the international agrofood market”, in addition to varying state capacity
for designing strategies with the view to tackle the demands from con-
temporary agrofood globalization. This state capacity has been condi-
tioned by national institutions shaped over time and national regulations.
Mapping out several strands of research in the field of economic his-
tory, Baraibar extracts key concepts and theorized notions and then cre-
ates her distinctive conceptual-analytical grid with which she approaches
a comprehensive empirical material (including several interviews with
high-level officials in the three countries). She valuably identifies some
key limitations in two broad fields: land-use and land-cover change
(LULCC), on the one hand, concentrating on “distant drivers and world
systemic explanations” and pressures arising from economic and political
globalization, versus “myopically centering the analysis on formal state
regulations as if recent agrarian change could be exclusively governed by
the nation-states,” on the other. The void she identifies is then replaced
with a multifaceted reflection on the state’s room for maneuver in the
globalized economy, global markets, and global production chains. The
result is a multilayered, intriguing study, which should leave a mark in
the academic literature on this global phenomenon as it displays signifi-
cant depth, originality, and critical analysis.
We find it particularly interesting the way Baraibar scrutinizes the
role of the state in Latin America. She emphasizes it is important to go
beyond the exaggerated supposition of Latin American states “either
as powerless victims” (short of state autonomy) or “completely failed
states or in perfect control”. Her study speaks to one of our aims with
this series, namely to explore the tensions and dialogue around how to
manage the imbalance between states, markets, and societies. The two
approaches: (1) an overemphasis on global forces with a mischaracteri-
zation of the role of the Latin American state and public regulations, as
well as (2) a state-centrist approach that helps little to understand the
pressures on the Latin American state arising from transnational agri-
business, have to be complemented with an analysis focused on bringing
the state back into the picture, she claims. Besides, the sovereign power
of the state is still in place, and should be used to regulate, protect and
facilitate environmental, territorial and peoples’ capacities and rights, she
insists.
viii SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
The design of Baraibar’s study is innovative and revolves around the
idea that the state is certainly important, but “it is not the only game
in town.” Therefore, she applies three distinct approaches to dissect
changes in the soybean and beef complexes in Argentina, Paraguay, and
Uruguay. First, to fixate the “political economy of agrarian change,”
she centers on the creation of institutions and regulations in a historical
approach in which food regimes “functions as a chronological periodiza-
tion.” Second, she adopts a world systemic approach. Here, the soybeans
and beef production in the three countries is approached through a
global commodity chain analysis. Third, Baraibar applies a regulatory
approach that enables the examination of regulatory frameworks in a
comparative light (to address how Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay
cope with the transformative pressures brought by agrofood globaliza-
tion). She advocates that in order to understand the political economy
of current agrarian change in Latin America, one has to keep a good his-
torical record of many different changes that have taken place associated
with regulations, institutions and actors that made key decisions. The
ways in which agrarian change has been articulated in the three coun-
tries can only be understood by including characteristic features in spe-
cific national regulatory frameworks and then “connecting them to both
macro (international) and micro (specific areas of territories) levels.”
It should be pointed out that Baraibar engages in a notable discussion
between the state-centric approach and the world systems approach to
shed light on the conflict between the (in)capacity of states to enforce
their mandate and rights, on the one hand, and agribusinesses’ (self)
interests and their predilection for neoliberal global market mechanisms,
on the other. Baraibar skillfully penetrates the connections between the
national, the regional and the international arenas through mapping out
the genealogy of specific policies. This methodology enables her to track
down the actors, their agendas and the ways in which the decision-mak-
ing process took place, giving rise to regulations, institutionalization or
else, a regime. Her study is enriched by a significant number of in-depth
personal interviews with key stakeholders from a wide array of positions,
who participated in the policy formulation and implementation of many
of the policies discussed throughout the chapters.
Now, Baraibar does not seek to issue prescriptions for how to rem-
edy some of the persistent imbalances in the soybean and beef complexes
involving Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. With acute precision, she
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE ix
identifies some of the challenges brought on by distant-driven agrar-
ian change when it comes to governance of food production systems.
Moreover, she indirectly highlights dilemmas of development and how
to handle the social costs arising from this particular phenomenon. In
the final chapter, she suggests that “stronger and more coordinated
regulative efforts could lead to more sustainable pathways for agrarian
change in Latin America.” As this series seeks to go beyond a traditional
focus on the virtues of intraregional and inter-regional trade agreements,
and (neo-)liberal economic policies, Baraibar’s thought-provoking work
is a very welcome contribution to bring greater focus on Latin America
in debates on contemporary global challenges, such as precisely agropas-
toral expansion.
One of the many outstanding qualities of Baraibar’s exhaustive
study is that she unveils the intertwined nature of LULCC change in
the increasing expansion of the soybeans and beef complexes, which is
also cross-nationally integrated. It is also remarkable how she examines
some of the adverse social-ecological effects resulting from changes in
the production process; massive losses of farming land and diversity of
crops. In addition, she takes into consideration social aspects following
LULCC change such as “displacement of family farmers” and “agricul-
ture without farmers” (reliance on sophisticated technological solutions,
automatization). Looking at the transformations in the agency–struc-
ture relationship in the changing production process, it is clear that the
value added from processing soybeans has been transferred from the
local farmers to multinational corporations. Hence, concentration of
land and agribusiness are cornerstones in the dilemma of decreasing food
sovereignty.
In contrast, we reason that the tensions inherent in such transforma-
tions could also be seen through the classical distinction made by Karl
Polanyi in his seminal work The Great Transformation (1944), where
the self-regulating market aims to commodify land, labor, and money,
and the countermovement tries to regulate and protect the social strata,
or the community. In our times, however, Polanyi’s idea of a “double
movement” does not function the same way as in the times of the emer-
gence of market economy in England. First, the nation-state cannot
longer be exclusively accountable for the regulation of social and mar-
ket relations. A pattern of global governance is vested in international
organizations, which in turn establish policies and provide funding for