Globalisation processes in the Dry Chaco of Argentina. The expansion of soybean and its human consequences

KRAPOVICKAS, JULIETA

Koln

Congreso; 32nd International Geographical Congress. Down to Earth; 2012

International Geographical Union

Under the influence of globalisation processes, for several decades the Argentine Chaco region manifests intense changes, both environmental and human. Among the former, it should be noted the advance of deforestation and forest degradation, main causes of carbon emissions and global climate change generators. Among the latter, migrations, changes associated with access to land and common pool resources by the local population, and the growth of the productive and business sectors result of global market entry, are the most prominent. In the context of a country clearly urban (according to the latest data available 89% of Argentina's population was defined as urban) the Chaco region represents a unique case of high rurality, isolation, poverty, and high proportion of indigenous people (who still uses the forest resources freely for their survival). The most important territorial manifestation of globalisation in there is the change in land use. High deforestation rates are associated with the expansion of the agrarian frontier, which is resulting from good prices of certain commodities (e.g. soybeans) in the international market. Thus, these globalisation processes have led to the coexistence of two worlds within the rural areas of Chaco: by one side, the local rural population with their traditional lifestyles, and by the other side producers and entrepreneurs often foreign or extra-regional, who used capitalist logics and productive models very different from the local ones. In this paper it is proposed a first approach to the logic and the model of soybean production in localities in the south and north of the Salta province (i.e. Las Lajitas and Joaquín V. González in the South, Orán and Tartagal in the Nord). It will be used primary information from semi-structured interviews with producers, entrepreneurs and with national and provincial production institutions operating in the area. It will be analyzed the incorporation of local labor in soybean production, the role of the activity as a catalyst for the economy in the localities as well as the environmental effects of new production model, specifically its implications for deforestation, always from the perspective of a social actor: the producer of soybeans.