Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
food crops with commercial non-traditional feed crops and other high-value com-
modities, suh as fresh fruit and vegetables, for export from developing countries.
This shift was a response to an increasing demand for animal proteins and other
high-value foods, driven by the proliferation of affluent diets primarily, but not ex-
clusively, in the developed world (McMihael, 1997; McGlade, 1997).
According to Walter Pengue (2005, p319) 'we are facing a batle for high quality
protein between developed and developing countries'. In the Southern Cone this shift
has been experienced when a more diverse food production model is altered and
replaced by the extensive cultivation of feed crops for animals, largely destined for
Europe and China. As a result, poor people can no longer produce or afford the di-
verse diets they once enjoyed: traditional high-value meat protein grown on less in-
tensive pasture has been displaced by vegetable protein, suh as soybeans. his nu-
tritional hange entails a cultural shit as well as adverse efects on health (Pengue,
2005). Farshad Araghi (2000, p155) refers to this phenomenon as the 'hunger amidst
abundance' that materializes when agriculture is directed towards affluent diets and
a process of depeasantization occurs in whih the rural poor lose the means to sub-
sist.
At the broader scale, the soyization of Southern Cone agriculture appears as a
relentless tide through whih the peasantry is being disadvantaged in a global food
market largely controlled by powerful agro-multinational corporations (McMihael,
2000).
Campesinos
, on one hand, cannot afford to modernize in order to compete in
the global market; while on the other hand, their production of basic foodstuffs is
hallenged by loss of land to large farmers and by imports of artiicially heap food-
stufs produced by subsidized farmers in the North (McMihael, 1997). hat, in turn,
has led in some cases to food deficiency and dependency, as well as malnutrition
(Pengue, 2005). It is, however, possible to identify actions of
campesino
organizations
that seek to contest the incursion of soybean cultivation. While it is not possible at
this point to argue that suh activities are successful (the area of soybean cultivation
continues to grow), we believe the existence (and persistence) of these organizations
offers an indication of the potential to promote and improve the type of small-scale
practices and tehnologies that are posed as more appropriate solutions to global
food insecurity (see Godfray
et al.
, 2010). The MOCASE-VC organization offers in-
sight to both the potential of, and hallenges to, locally initiated attempts to contest
the expansion of commodity agriculture.
