Rural Development Programs in Argentina and its Institutions (in the context of neoliberal macroeconomic adjustment

MANZANAL, MABEL

Rural Development Issues

Nova Science Publishers Inc.

Lugar: New York; Año: 2008; p. 137 - 156

Rural development begins in Argentina together with the restoration of democracy in the 1980s, but the first actions only started to be developed in the 1990s.  Since then, different programs have followed and overlapped. These programs are precisely the purpose of our study. This paper discusses the resultant rural strategies of the main rural development programs of Argentina in the context of the neoliberal macroeconomic adjustment. It identifies its institutions and analyses whether the actions that are being carried out are suitable or not, and if the assistance to help the rural poor (promoted by international financing organisms) is feasible in face of the negative impact of the neoliberal policy over the small and medium farmers. Besides, this paper looks into and develops questions about the suitability of local and provincial institutional structures for satisfying the institutional demands of rural development programs. Our starting point is the macroeconomic transformation of the 1990s, which affected the agricultural activity and brought about permanent processes of re-structuring and de-structuring of the public and private institutions linked with rural development management.