Agri-food model, social inequalities and alternatives in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, an industrial model of food and agricultural production consolidated globally and in Latin America. This was the result of the expansion of foreign investment from countries like the United States, the so-called Green Revolution, and their relationships with development policies in the Global South. These processes have been studied by World System historical approaches such as food regime analysis (Friedmann, 2005; McMichael, 2009). In recent decades, this model expanded as the result of neoliberalism, the expansion of agro-industrial production of flex crops, and the recent wave of land grabbing. Both historically and in its present dynamics, the agri-food model produced several impacts such as the transformation of ecosystems, climate change, changes in the forms of agricultural production, alterations in diets, labor disputes, and land conflicts. In contrast, dynamics of resistance also emerged (Altieri et al, 2012; Alkon and Agyeman, 2011). The formation of a neoliberal food regime in Latin America has been studied by several authors (Fitting, 2011; Lapegna, 2014; Otero, 2008; Pechlaner & Otero, 2008). In this literature, an area that requires further examination is the relationship between the neoliberal agri-food model, social inequalities, and the alternatives to this model. This panel aims to analyze the structuration of inequalities within “food value chains”, including: the role of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality; the inequalities between regions; the interplay between the political, cultural, environmental, socioeconomic, and knowledge inequalities; the effects of technology packages and Free Trade; the overlapping of land conflicts and labor disputes; processes of resistance or “alternatives” (anti-hegemonic proposals and coalitions); and the role of the state vis à vis the private economic actors.

Sub Track

• Agrarian and Rural Life

Session Organizer

• Jairo Baquero Melo, Universidad del Rosario

Chair

• Renata Motta, Freie Universität Berlin

Individual Presentations

• Technocracy upside-down: Alternative and subaltern indicators for food sovereignty in Ecuador - Johannes M Waldmueller, New York University / Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito

• Resistencias campesinas al agronegocio y alternativas productivas: El caso de la Unión de Trabajadores Rurales de Mendoza, Argentina. - Agustina Schvartz

• Resistance Against The Biotechnological Agrarian Model: An Inequality Perspective - Markus Rauchecker, Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin

• Gobernanza Neocorporativa y Justicia Ambiental. Tensiones en torno a la liberación de transgénicos en Brasil, México y Argentina - Mauricio Berger, CONICET IIFAP UNC

• Oil Palm, Family Farming and Agribusiness: Biodiesel Policy and State Intervention in Pará, Brazil - Diana Cordoba, SUNY-ESF

Discussant

• Raul Matta