La república sojera: origins and consequences of the agricultural export of soybeans in Argentina

Abstract

The boom in soybean agro-exports and the consequent expansion of agricultural frontiers profoundly changed society and the rural world of South America, with specific forms and specifications in each territory. The productivist attitude perpetrated since the 1970s had negative consequences in environmental, economic and social terms that impacted the most fragile territories for whom the export-oriented agricultural economy is the key to their structural development. Basic food for zootechnical feeding, the Soybeans have become an essential crop in recent decades and the expansion of intensive farming has caused an increase in the demand for soybeans. The case study considered in this thesis is Argentina, a territory in which the expansion of the agricultural frontier and the protagonism of agribusiness multinationals caused the deforestation of fragile ecological areas, the destruction of the biodiverse environments of the Pampas and the consequent expulsion of the indigenous communities that inhabited these spaces for centuries. The Argentine political context, with its contradictions and complexities, shaped a political scenario in recent decades that favored this process. Critical analysis is built in this work through the study and consultation of scientific essays, documents of the European Commission and the Argentine government, in order to implement a well-founded examination of the contradictions of the current agricultural production model, based on a once again in a vision and division of the world into center and periphery.