Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
increases during the 1980s. In the aftermath, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank were able to leverage neoliberal reforms (coined 'structural adjust-
ments') across the region, a process whih included privatization of state enterprises
and a sudden decline in government social expenditure. This restructuring diverted
the economic development focus from industry to agriculture, in whih the region
was deemed to have a comparative advantage, and forced small-scale farmers and
peasants to compete with beter resourced commercial, and oten multinational, ag-
ribusiness (Kay, 2004; Porto, 2007). The associated imperative to reduce national debt
levels also meant that the focus of agricultural production shifted from meeting do-
mestic market demands to promoting crops with the most lucrative export potential
- a role whih soybeans would eventually ill.
In addition to iting well within the emerging political economic arena of late
20th century South America, soybeans embodied the means to ahieve a long-held
desire to modernize agricultural production. The marginal value of soybean produc-
tion limits its viability as a cash crop, except where large areas can be managed by
a relatively small amount of labour. In other words, soybeans only prove profitable
as a commodity, under mehanized production. From its introduction to southern
Brazil, the crop has involved the replacement of manual with mehanized labour in
agricultural production (Bank and den Boer, 1991). With increasing value placed on
larger areas of cultivation - considered more eicient for mehanized use - rural
populations were displaced as share-cropping and similar land leasing arrangements
become less tenable and small landholders were pressured to sell or abandon their
farms. The emphasis on modernization has also enabled the introduction of GMO
seeds in South America, led by RR soybeans, whih facilitate no-till management
and further reduce running costs of farm mahinery while simultaneously increas-
ing reliance on herbicides.
he process through whih soyization has impinged on the land access rights of
local
campesinos
while privileging the production of an industrialized commodity
offers a dramatic example of hallenges that a global food system based on the
neoliberal model poses to Food Sovereignty. Philip McMihael (1997) atributed the
problem of food dependency in the developing world to the green revolution of
the 1970s, whih incorporated the agro-industrial model into food production in the
South. Modernization of agriculture created dependency on imported inputs and en-
hanced the integration of the food market. Since the 1980s, it was increasingly not-
able that this North-South integration had initiated substitution of traditional basic
