Disappearing nature? Agribusiness, biotechnology and distance in Argentine soybean production

Abstract

A recent trend identified in the agro-food literature is that financialization in the global food system is further increasing the distance between farm and plate as well as abstracting physical commodities into market derivatives. How does food, a basic material need, become a commodity, a financial asset divorced from its physical form? This contribution explores the growing distance and abstraction of food from farm using Argentina's soy model as a case study. I explore the various drivers of distancing across the soy value chain in Argentina, including industrialization, globalization, corporatization and finance. I argue that the push for technological innovation by large-scale agribusinesses, in articulation with financial sector involvement, are both an example of and are instrumental in the process of distancing and abstraction identified in the agro-food literature. This paper also highlights how, despite agribusiness efforts to ‘displace’ and ‘disappear’ nature, these processes are never fully accomplished. I thus reflect on the socio-ecological contradictions that arise from the processes of distancing and abstraction which accompany the financialization of the corporate food system under neoliberal globalization.

Keywords:

• Argentina
• soybeans
• agribusiness
• financialization
• distance
• GMOs
• biotechnology

Acknowledgements

This contribution is based on work supported by two Doctoral Research Grants and a Dissertation Fellowship granted by The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). I'm deeply grateful to Ken Gould, Justin Myers, Monica Guerra, Sam Cohn, Gustavo Oliveira, Susanna Hecht, JPS editor Jun Borras and two anonymous reviewers for their tremendous insight, comments, suggestions and support. Many thanks also to Kirsteen Anderson for her copy-editing help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 As David Harvey (1990, 423) notes, ‘The grapes that sit upon the supermarket shelves are mute; we cannot see the fingerprints of exploitation upon them or tell immediately what part of the world they are from'.

2 Sowing pools are not counted as a category in the rural census; therefore, there is no official data about them. Data is estimated based on press and Internet sources (in some cases, the companies’ own websites). These figures are compatible with those reported in similar peer-reviewed articles, such as Cáceres (2015); Gras and Hernández (2014); and Murmis and Murmis (2012).

3 Information technology (IT) developments that have greatly facilitated geographical expansion include communication technologies (phone, fax and the Internet), GPS, and software applications for risk analysis and resource and production planning. For examples of how Los Grobo applies these technologies, see Bell and Cintra (2010).

4 Gustavo Grobocopatel, CEO of Los Grobo, was the first to call himself a ‘landless'. Grobocopatel's statement was a deliberate verbal provocation of peasant activists by misappropriating the sem terra name from the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST).

Additional information

Funding

The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).

Notes on contributors

Amalia Leguizamón

Amalia Leguizamón is an assistant professor of sociology at Tulane University in New Orleans. She holds a PhD in sociology from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2014). Her current research is on the changing socio-ecological dynamics resulting from large-scale production of genetically modified soybeans in Argentina. Email: [email protected]