Family Farming-Agribusiness: Disputes, Relationships and Projects

Abstract

This article identifies the aspects where tensions between different ways of carrying out the agricultural activity emerge, their local impacts and the responses of social agents both in material and discursive terms. It analyzes a district of the Argentinean Pampas region where traditionally labor intensive crops with participation of family farmers and oriented to the domestic market have developed, and in which there is a growing expansion of extensive agriculture oriented to world markets. Often regarded as an expression of the agribusiness paradigm, the latter is associated to large-scale agriculture seeking short-term benefits, and with the dislocation of production of the place where surpluses are invested. While there are elements that reflect the consolidation of the so-called agribusiness model, its features are not reproduced mechanically and evenly in the rural space. There are hybrid situations and processes not directly attributed to the influence that one of them takes over the other. The importance of family farmers and the nature of their productive behavior may represent potential barriers to this. Nevertheless, their weakness as social actors to position their interests is an indicator of their difficulties to persist within the agrarian structure that is emerging.