Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
hese hanges have not occurred without the resistance and mobilization of
rural social actors. Livelihood hallenges associated with neoliberal commodity pro-
duction have enhanced the consolidation of social movements across these regions,
whih continuously contest this agro-export model. Suh notable movements are the
Brazilian Landless Rural Workers' Movement (
Movimento sem Terra
- MST) and the
Paraguayan National Coordinating Board of Peasant Organizations (MCNOC). In
this hapter we highlight some of the main socioeconomic efects of the soyization
process in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, and use an Argentinean case study of
Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero -
Vía Campesina
) as an exemplary anti-
hegemonic peasant organization to show the types of local initiatives that have
emerged in response to expanding soybean cultivation.
The advancing soybean frontier and its impacts
For the authors, our engagements with the people occupying the landscapes affected
by soy production also evoke insight to the relationship between commodity soy-
bean production and global food security. One of us (Chris) has experienced the
impact of soybean expansion as a temporal development. On an initial trip to the
Eastern Paraguayan province of Alto Parana in 1990, he recalls driving a recently
sealed highway through expanses of semi-tropical forest. The wall of trees bordering
the road was broken occasionally by encampments of landless peasants that en-
croahed no more than 50 meters into the dense tree cover. More developed set-
tlements of immigrants (from Brazil, Europe, North America or Japan) were only
evident in road signs pointing to a
Colonia
located to the east, nearer to the Parana
River. Subsequent trips along the same road in 1996 and 1999 revealed a land-
scape markedly devoid of trees and with cultivated land strething to the hori-
zon. The landless encampments had been replaced by isolated clusters of smallhold-
ers' homes, the occasional bustling town and several immigrant setlements distin-
guished by larger houses and abundant agricultural mahinery. he closed, other-
worldly confines of the forest had been completely replaced by vast, sparsely-pop-
ulated swaths of industrialized agriculture. In this landscape, even the smallhold-
ers often turned to soybeans - grown with mahinery contracted through larger
landowners - as the only economically viable agricultural activity. Due to the scale
of production imposed by the mahinery employed, the soybeans have replaced
