Hegemony, Technological Innovation and Corporate Identities: 50 Years of Agricultural Revolutions in Argentina

Abstract

The technological changes that have occurred since the mid-1960s in Argentine agriculture -first the Green Revolution and then the Agribusiness Paradigmhave been conceptualized as revolutionary not only with regard to their productivity improvements but also because they brought with them a change of mentality. Based on two different business conceptions, during each period an agrarian elite led the 'revolutionary' process, offering a technological response as the means of guaranteeing agriculture's 'survival' after various crises. For each period, we can identify a correspondence between the status given to technology, the conception of business and the type of government regulation. This paper analyses how the proposition of a 'technological revolution' corresponds to the construction of the ideological leadership through which the agrarian bourgeoisie managed to orientate agrarian development.

A tipping point for agricultural expansion? Technological changes and capital accumulation in Argentina's rural sector

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“…As advocates of the dominant agricultural model argue, this “technological revolution” led to increases in basic indicators as yields as well as to the transformation of “unproductive” or “unexploited” land. Unlike other Latin American countries, these facts have, in turn, resulted in the legitimization of technological changes in Argentina (Gras & Hernández, ), obfuscating its interdependence with broader features of capital accumulation such as the expansion of commodity markets, flex cropping, land grabbing, dispossession and enclosures, and social, economic, and productive exclusion. This dominant narrative veils the fast appropriation of “nature's free gift” that fuelled Argentina's agricultural growth.…”

Territorial Changes Around Biodiesel: A Case Study of North-Western Argentina

“…Second, this section also focuses on socio-political impacts, such as the construction of "development narratives" (Svampa and Antonelli 2009), that legitimize the practices of agribusiness. This finally leads to the concept of hegemony (Gramsci 2011;Gras and Hernández 2016). This concept helps provide a better understanding of the power dimension within the societal-nature relations identified by the case study (understood in the sense of Flyvbjerg 2011).…”

Emerging, and old, dilemmas for food security in Latin America

“…That is why controversies on the subject of transgenics in Latin America are focused on the impact of biotechnology on biodiversity in the regions (Peschard, ). This can be observed in the case of Guatemala, where the biodiversity of maize has been maintained due to the fact that the original population represents 60% of the population, and 90% of this population is in rural areas (Klepek, ), although in other regions in Latin America, the expansion of biotechnology corporations in Brazil, Argentina, and India are responsible for 80% of crops with this type of technology (Gras & Hernández, ). The transit of a healthy and diversified diet was the main purpose in the agendas on food security, but consumption trends show the contrary.…”