Transformative alternatives: opportunities and conflicts in socio-technical transitions in agriculture. The case of cotton production in Argentina?

ARZA, VALERIA

Ciudad del Cabo

Exposición; HSRC Annual Innovation and Development Lecture; 2014

HSRC

Alternative systems of agricultural production could contribute to overcome current complex challenges of guaranteeing food security through sustainable production and improving resiliency to climate change. International policy debates have highlighted the need to support sustainable agriculture. However policy discourse and practice conceive alternative systems of sustainableagriculture as complementary to industrial agriculture and has just addressed technical aspects to regulate co-production. Using the socio-technical transition framework this paper discusses problems faced by alternative systems when they have to co-exist with dominant practices of industrial agriculture. Two types of problems are identified. On the one hand, for alternative practices to emerge and consolidate they need to overcome the challenge of creating inexistent enabling factors such as infrastructure, regulation, markets, etc. On the other hand, there may also be conflicts stemming from incompatibilities of practices or due to competition over the same resources with dominant actors. These problems delay the emergence of alternative systems and hinder theirconsolidation and diffusion. We illustrate these issues with a case study of small cotton production in Argentina, contrasting industrial and agroecological agriculture. The empirical information comes from six participatory workshops with farmers and 29 interviews conducted in the period 2010-2012 in Argentina.