1976: Reflections on the origins of Agribusiness in the Americas

• In Event: Roger Burbach and Patricia Flynn remembered: "Agribusiness in the Americas 50 Years Later"

Abstract

Often called the “Me-Decade” in the United States, the 1970s were also years of dramatic transformation and profound questioning of values and directions. These tendencies were no more pronounced than in the state of California, where one group “dropped out,” while others campaigned for “economic democracy,” a radical form commonwealth. A broad-based anti-war social movement had helped put an end to imperialist war in Vietnam and investigative reporting helped topple a corrupt president. The “people united” sensed their power. With the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, even the U.S. government seemed to question its role in the world, promising to place human rights on a par with economic rights at home and abroad. It was in this context that in 1976 Patricia Flynn and Roger Burbach, two California journalists, produced a ground-breaking study of the San Francisco-based Del Monte Corporation, representing the agribusiness giant as an example of “agro-imperialism,” exploiting Chicano farmworkers at home and forcing peasants off their land in Latin America in order to create agro-export plantations. This study reflects on this period to contextualize the production of Agribusiness in the Americas and its existential as well as ideological roots.

Author

• Clifford A Welch, Universidade Federal de São Paulo