The development of a Natural Resource Management Policy

Master´s Thesis, 45 credits
Sustainable Enterprising Master´s programme 2009/11, 120 credits
The development of a Natural Resource
Management Policy
A discourse analysis on soybean farming during
Uruguay’s agricultural regime shift (2000-2010)
Nicolás Castagno
1 The development of a Natural Resource Management
Policy: a discourse analysis on soybean farming during
Uruguay’s agricultural regime shift (2000-2010)
MSc Student: Nicolás Castagno
Supervisor: Dr. Lisa Deutsch, Assistant Professor, Researcher and Director of
Studies, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University.
Co-supervisor: Matilda Baraibar, PhD student, Dept of Economic History,
Stockholm University.
2 3 ABSTRACT
This thesis studies symbolic power within Uruguay’s agricultural regime shift
between 2000 and 2010. This socio-ecological system (SES) has been changing from
an agricultural-livestock farming system to one dominated by intensive crop
agriculture. The aim is to understand the role of a natural resource management
program (NRMP) within the processes that are leading to a different state. The main
research method is a discursive analysis of actors’ position-taking regarding the
change in agriculture.
The main results indicate that: 1) an interacting regime shift took place in Uruguay
where a new type of agricultural producer was the main driver that generated multiple
domain and scale effects; 2) soil erosion as technological and neutral problem
emerges as a consequence of the struggle between actors’ interpretations of the
agricultural changes; 3) a reorganization cycle takes place in natural resource
management program (NRMP); 4) NRMP promotes a further reorganization of
resources: development of new scientific research problems and 5) a regime shift is
observable in natural resource management: ecological knowledge is based on power
relations rather than on historical experience.
The study concludes that symbolic relations of power during a regime shift are of
great importance to understand how a society institutionalizes a management program
and develops ecological knowledge. In turn, NRMP plays a fundamental role during
that system reorganization phase, as it sustains certain exploitation of the natural
resources through the promotion of new ecological knowledge. The recommendation
for RS theory is to situate natural resource management and ecological knowledge as
parts of the dynamics of a social-ecological system.
4 Table of Contents 1) Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 6 1.1) Problem Statement............................................................................................................... 6 1.2) Motivation............................................................................................................................10 1.3) Research question and objectives ...................................................................................10 1.4) Study’s exposition framework.........................................................................................11 2) Theoretical framework ............................................................................................... 12 2.1) Theoretical framework and definition of key concepts .............................................12 2.1.1) SES, RS, management and power relations ......................................................................12 2.1.2) Symbolic systems and power relations ...............................................................................14 3) Research Method ......................................................................................................... 20 3.1) How did I gather the data? ..............................................................................................20 3.2) Strategy of Analysis ...........................................................................................................23 4) Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 25 4.1) What is new in Uruguay’s agriculture? ........................................................................25 4.1.1) Changes in land use ...................................................................................................................25 4.1.2) Environmental impacts.............................................................................................................29 4.1.3) Changes in the social structure of agriculture...................................................................30 4.1.4) Agricultural managers and their organization of agriculture.......................................34 4.1.5) Uruguay’s agricultural system adaptive cycle ..................................................................36 4.2) The discourses around soybean agriculture in contemporary Uruguay: actors’
interpretations and positions ...................................................................................................40 4.2.1) Soybean agriculture in the media..........................................................................................40 4.2.2) The discourse on a “new agriculture”: global market, technological and social
innovation..................................................................................................................................................41 4.2.3) Critics on biotechnology and alternative discourses to the “new agriculture” ......43 4.2.4) The discourse on the “new agriculture” and the recognition of the environmental
issues ...........................................................................................................................................................47 4.2.5) The discursive separation of “environmental impact” from its social conditions of
production..................................................................................................................................................54 4.3) Meetings on soybean agriculture: a PD towards the institutionalization of NRM
........................................................................................................................................................58 4.3.1) The relationship MGAP, INIA, CAF and MTO ..............................................................58 4.3.2) Some examples of company’s meetings.............................................................................59 4.3.3) Themes and actors in the conformation of a PD ..............................................................60 4.4) Natural resource management in Uruguay after the expansion of soybean
agriculture: the RENARE and the institutionalization of the problem of soil erosion
........................................................................................................................................................62 4.4.1) The RENARE and its relationship with the PD ...............................................................62 4.4.2) The RENARE and the reorganization cycle in NRMP..................................................63 4.5) Soybean agriculture and scientific research’s agenda: the production of
ecological knowledge .................................................................................................................65 4.5.1) The reorganization of agriculture and scientific knowledge........................................66 5) Recapitulation of results............................................................................................. 69 6) Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 75 7) Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 76 5 8) Appendix........................................................................................................................ 80 8.1) Modified Organisms in Agriculture...............................................................................80 8.2) Meetings on soybean agriculture ....................................................................................81 8.3) Regarding the sense of the meetings ..............................................................................84 8.4) The Seminar for a Sustainable Agriculture .................................................................85 8.5) The vision inside the CAF ................................................................................................88 8.6) El Tejar and Porteras Abiertas.......................................................................................89 8.7) The academic community and its symbolic role during the RS...............................90 8.8) The MTO and scientific research ...................................................................................93 6 1) Introduction
1.1) Problem Statement
Since 2003 soybean agriculture expanded considerably in Uruguay becoming the
most important single crop in the country (Arbeletche, Hoffman and Ernst, 2010).
Today it occupies the 46,25 percent of the country’s crop areas (DIEA, 2010), by far
the largest surface area destined to a single crop. During this period Uruguay’s
agricultural system has gone from a system of “agricultura-ganaderia” (crop
agriculture-livestock farming) to one dominated by the dynamics of summer crop
agriculture.
A group of interacting variables indicates that this social-ecological system (SES)
experienced a particular change cycle and opened the possibility to analyze the
dynamics driving a regime shift (RS). On the ecological aspect, there has been an
extended transformation of grasslands into croplands. On the socio-economic aspect,
the rural activities’ relative relevance (livestock farming/ crop agriculture) has been
altered; while the use of new technologies has intensified both activities. At the same
time, there has been a process of economic and land concentration that has modified
the social structure of the various social sectors (new agricultural producers, reduction
of small producers). Lastly, a group of new producers, the “gerenciadores agricolas”
(agricultural managers, AM; Arbeletche, 2008), has promoted a new business
ideology.
This process of change did not happen unnoticed: producers, government
departments, non-governmental organizations, researchers and media evaluated the
agricultural panorama from different points of view. The problem of the management
of the natural resources in Uruguay is an important topic that has grown in importance
year after year1. In this respect, there is a tendency to highlight the natural resource
issues in terms of technological and agronomic problems, leaving aside the
1
Furthermore, the concern on the natural resources is not only related to soybean agriculture but also to
other activities in place since the last decade: for example, agricultural forestation and paper industry or
livestock farming. 7 consideration of socio-economic questions. In this context, problems that are more
suitable to be defined in such impartial terms will acquire better promotion in the
public sphere than others. My proposal is that questioning this feature the
interconnection between the discursive dimension and the changes that are taking
place in the social-ecological system can be exposed. Synthetically, the consequence
of that presentation will signify a further development in the reorganization of the
agriculture.
In particular, the expansion of soybean agriculture has taken the Uruguayan state
to adjust its national regulation of the exploitation of natural resources associated with
agriculture. As a consequence, the Departamento de Recursos Naturales Renovables
(Department of Renewable Natural Resources, RENARE) has been promoting since
2008 a Plan to control the use of the soils. This is the most promoted plan from a
governmental institution looking to directly influence the soybean agriculture’s use of
the ecosystem2. The problem is how, from all the interconnected environmental
problems related to soybean agriculture and the vivid discussions around them, did
precisely soil erosion become the principal impact addressed. In this sense, the
analysis of the discursive dimension and its relationships to the RENARE’s program
is a promising area of research. What demands is the Plan satisfying? What role
within the regime shift is it called to play? My main goal is to understand the role of
NRMP within the processes that are leading to an alternative state in Uruguay’s
agriculture.
Several authors studied the economic concentration of land and the intensification
of soybean agriculture in Uruguay (Pinero, “no date”; Arbeletche, 2007, 2008 and “no
date”, Cancela y Melgar, 2004). Yet the literature did not analyze the role of NRMP
within this agricultural context. This is noteworthy given the concerns on the
environmental impacts of soybean agriculture: soybean agriculture is an issue of
intellectual debate and social confrontation in Uruguay. A few authors mention the
environmental issues as one of the central concerns around agriculture in
contemporary Uruguay (Pinero, no date and Carámbula, 2010). Nevertheless, those
2
The Proyecto de Produccion Responsable (Responsible Production Project, PPP) developed also
some partial attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the activity. Basically the agreement with
some cooperatives for the recollection of discharged plastic containers and a campaign to increase the
farmers’ awareness on the use of agrochemicals. This agreement for example lasted only one year.
8 authors did not consider how power relationships shape NRMP within the new
agricultural context.
My theoretical approach connects sociological concepts – for instance, symbolic
power (Pierre Bourdieu, 1994) and social problem (Remi Lenoir, 1993) - with the
concept of social-ecological system (Gunderson, Holling et.all, 2002) and specifically
with the role that natural resource management practices have within the socialecological system (Berkes and Folke, 2002). I expect to contribute to RS theory’s
understanding of NRMP by incorporating sociological approaches that are sensitive to
the examination of relations of power (Bourdieu 1994, Lenoir, 1993) I base my
empirical analysis on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power: that is, the cultural
process through which social actors see the arbitrary classifications, discourses or
views of the social world not as contingent and historical products but as natural or
given ones. In this way, those classifications are socially legitimated (Bourdieu,
1994). In my view, this is a crucial step to observe how social relations of power
historically shape a specific social-ecological system.
Moreover, Bourdieu sustains that during periods of social change the positions
taken by actors (“position-taking”) are important to re-define the social structure as
these same structures are changing
(Bourdieu, 1992: 105). In this sense, the
connection of Bourdieu’s approach to Regime Shift theory helps to explain how the
symbolic and real struggles among social actors transform a socio-ecological system,
connecting with specific agricultural shifts.
By employing Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power I approach from a new angle
the conceptual area in which RS theory (Gunderson and Holling, 2002) locates power
relations. Regime shift theory calls this area as “problem domain”: a space of struggle
between social actors for the resolution of an environmental problem. At the empirical
level, I examine what are the meanings and agricultural discourses uttered and
produced by different actors during Uruguay’s agricultural shift and how that cultural
process has defined a new problem domain on soybean agriculture that was crucial for
the developing of a new natural resource management program in Uruguay during the
period 2000-2010.
Recently, resilience thinking (Walker and Salt, 2002, Gunderson et. al., 2002;
Berkes and Folke, 2002; Berkes, 1999) has been criticized for its ignorance of
9 historical relations of power (Hornborg, 2009). However, that school of thought has
not yet given any substantial response to the critique. Authors working on resilience
have only recognized that the question of power is a weak point within resilience
thinking.3 My thesis seeks to develop with an empirical case a possible approach to
power relations. I warn about the urgency to revise a conceptual history on power that
goes from Niccolò Machiavelli’s Prince to Michele Foucault’s biopower and to
consider how, as a theory and practice, resilience thinking relates to power relations in
society (Machiavelli, 1998; Foucault, 2004).
3
I will not develop a reading of these studies to contrast to Hornborg’s critic, but it is my impression
that those works are in the line of the ontological assumptions that Hornborg’s criticize on “resilience
thinking”. My personal impression is that Hornborg’s base its critics from a strong intellectual tradition
that the actors responding to on that blog do not grasp completely. For the “quick points” response to
the
critic,
the
blog
chat”
and
the
list
of
articles
recommended
see:
http://rs.resalliance.org/2009/05/19/machine-fetishism-money-and-resilience-theory/#comments
10 1.2)
Motivation
The idea to focus my study on the topic of NRMP in Uruguay during the period
between 2000 and 2010 is based on two motives. On the one hand, following Fikret
Berkes and Carl Folke (Gunderson and Holling, 2002: 121 and Berkes and Folke,
1998) I consider that the analysis of natural resource management practices4 (NRM)
permits to grasp how society and the environment interconnect.
On the other hand, having a background as a sociologist, NRM is the area within
“Sustainable Enterprising” that interests me more. My main interest has been: how
can NRM be understood as a social practice? In this sense, I believe this requires
considering the historical conditions of emergence of NRM. In other words, from a
critical standpoint is crucial not to observe NRM as a type of social action that is unhistorical and might be found in so-called “traditional” as well as “modern” societies.
NRM is one type of the possible solutions given by our societies to the environmental
problems connected to production within a capitalist context. As a result, is crucial to
observe how social actors struggle to define NRM in specific societies and
geographical areas.
1.3)
Research question and objectives
1) Why did soil erosion become one of the most promoted environmental impacts
addressed by a governmental institution in Uruguay?
4
The difference between NRMP and NRM is determined by the institutionalization of rules and
guidelines (NRMP) from where NRM in strict sense is developed. As I present later, NRM is an
institutionally nested practice (Berles and Folke, 1999) illustrating NRMP its institutionalized face.
Anyhow, in my opinion, there is a general indetermination in the use of the concept of NRM; it can be
used in areas as different as production activities (e.g agricultural techniques) or governmental natural
resource conservation. Nevertheless, the implicit idea is that humans can control and/or influence the
development of ecosystem dynamics. In my opinion, Berkes and Folke present the most accurate
definition of NRM as a practice that looks to “secure the flow of natural resources and environmental
services”. Definition that invites to discuss in what extension this type of social practice is to be found
in non-western societies.
11 2) How have different social actors defined the NRMP in Uruguay during the
expansion of soybean agriculture?
3) What are the power relations among those actors?
The general objectives of this research are: 1) to analyze how social actors have
taken different discursive positions on soybean agriculture and defined a new problem
domain for natural resource management in Uruguay, 2) to understand the role of the
NRMP during the RS.
1.4) Study’s exposition framework
In first place, I present my theoretical framework and methodological strategy.
Later, the Discussion section is divided in five sections: in “What is new in Uruguay’s
Agriculture (4.1), I explain the principal characteristics of the contemporary RS in
Uruguay’s agriculture. Even though my research focuses on the development of a PD,
I consider necessary to analyze the dynamics of the RS to understand the role that
NRMP might play within it. The rest of the Discussion section is a description of the
conformation and institutionalization of a problem domain, attending discursive
position-taking (4.2), discourse circulation (4.3), problem domain institutionalization
(4.4) and production of knowledge (4.5). After that description, I present a synthesis
of the main results arrived, answering every research question. Finally, I conclude the
Thesis with a reflection regarding the importance of discourse analysis to understand
the role of natural resource management during process of socio-ecological change.
12 2) Theoretical framework
2.1) Theoretical framework and definition of key concepts
2.1.1) SES, RS, management and power relations
Gunderson et. al (2002) develop a theoretical framework in which change
processes are understood as part of the ongoing dynamics between environment and
society. They see a SES as a complex adaptive system (CAS) in which changes are
understood as RS and NRM as institutional nested practice.
Walker and Salt (2006) define a SES as a single system conformed by the
interaction of the social and the ecological systems. These CAS are characterized by
their adaptive renewal cycle (Folke, 2006) “consisting of four phases: rapid growth,
conservation, release and reorganization” (Walker and Salt, 2006: 76).5 A regime
shift takes place when a threshold is crossed and a CAS reaches a new “stable state”6
in which the various ecological and social processes involved balance each other
(Scheffer, 2009; Gunderson et al., 2002). One fundamental property of SES is that
any change or modification in one of the domains has impacts on the others (2006:
32-35). Therefore, I consider with Kinzig et al. (2006) a SES as characterized by
“interacting regime shifts”, in which a shift in one of its domains (crossing one
threshold) leads to multiple thresholds in other domains (2006: 1). The analysis of the
multiple variables that conform each of these dimensions in Uruguay showed that the
changes observed in them during 2000-2010 conform a reorganization cycle in the
agriculture where the system alters its main function.
5
This school usually accredits the idea of cycles in economy to the economist Joseph Schumpeter who
analyze the economy as “boom and bust cycles” and accredit to him also the concept of “creative
destruction” (Gunderson and Holling, 2002: 34; Walker and Salt, 2002: 75). In reality (and this is well
know within the academic community), Schumpeter borrowed this concept from the scientific analysis
of capitalistic social relationship by Karl Marx. “Creative destruction” plays a key role in Marx’s
analysis of capitalistic reproduction. On the other hand, and putting aside all ontological ruptures
between historical materialism and SES theory, the “four phases” in CAS can illustrate the process of
accumulation and reproduction of Capital described by Marx (2007).
6
Usually this condition is also found in CAS’ bibliography as “alternative regime” or “alternative
stable state”, representing more accurately the non-linear characteristic of CAS.
13 Berkes and Folke observe that NRM plays a key role within SES, assuring the
constant flow of natural resources and ecosystem services (Gundersson et. al., 2002:
124). They consider NRM as an institutionally nested practice (social system) looking
to that end. When a SES is confronting a regime shift, NRM might assure or not the
flow of natural resources and ecosystem services. This depends on it’s adaptation to
the ecosystem and the social dynamics. In the last instance, the key factors are
ecological knowledge and understanding (EK&U) which “provides the linkage
between the ecosystem and management practice” (2002:122-125) (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1: Conceptual framework for the analysis of linked social-ecological systems. On the
left-hand side is the ecological system, which may consist of nested ecosystems (e.g., a regional
ecosystem containing the drainage basin of a river, which in turn consists of a number of watershed
ecosystems, and so on). On the right-hand side is a set of management practices in use. These practices
are embedded in institutions, and the institutions themselves may be a bested set. The linkage between
the ecosystem and management practice is provided by ecological knowledge and understanding. This
linkage is critical. If there is no ecological knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of the
resource and the ecosystems in which it operates, the likelihood for sustainable use is severely reduced.
Management practices and institutions have recognize, interpret, and relate to ecosystem dynamics in a
fashion that secures the flow of natural resources and ecosystem services. (2002: 124)
14 Frances Westley (2002) highlights power as a dimension for the analysis of NRM
within what he calls a PD7. A PD is defined as the field of struggle between actors
looking for the solution of specific environmental problems – that is, what Westley
calls undesirable ecosystem states. Through this struggle actors seek to secure
ecological services by shaping “the rules and rituals for how the domain will be
organized, at times even suppressing differences and quelling conflict among
stakeholders by silencing certain voices entirely” (2002:227). In other words, as
Berkes and Folke, Westley considers management as an institutionally nested practice
looking to secure natural resources. Nevertheless, with the concept of PD he also
highlights power relations during the institutionalization process.
It is within this conceptual framework of RS, NRM and PD where I believe
Bourdieu’s approach to symbolic relations of power may fit and provide useful
insights. Bourdieu’s theory helps to redefine the concept of PD. It helps to observe the
power relations at the bottom of the key social-ecological linkage during a regime
shift. In short, Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power permits us to do two analytical
operations: 1) to observe how the struggle to define a problem domain affects
ecological knowledge and understanding (and vice-versa), and 2) to observe power
relations as part of the regime shift dynamics. This approach may contribute to further
develop the theoretical framework stated by Gunderson et.al. (2002).
2.1.2) Symbolic systems and power relations
Following Bourdieu, I suggest that a problem domain (PD) is based on the social
production of a symbolic system that exerts a symbolic power, legitimizing
determined social classifications of the world. A PD is something to be produced and
not a given. Regarding our topic of research, the ideological or symbolic core of a PD
might be the existence of an environmental problem. Furthermore, and I believe this
7 Other
interesting approach to power relations in Gunderson et. al. (2002) is the one developed by
Lowell Pritchard Jr. and Steven E. Sanderson. This approach has similarities with mine, especially in
the consideration of competing discourses, the recognition that when a system is away from
equilibrium necessarily brings political implications and the question for the role of scientific
knowledge (2002: 149) I do not include any concept from Lowell and Sanderson because the chapter is
more of a philosophical reflection and the categorization of discourses made there can not be applied to
the case of Uruguay. 15 is my contribution to NRM analysis, not only the institutionalization of the problem
domain is based on power relations, but also the very definition of the problem is a
fundamental part of the power dynamics producing the domain as such. In this sense,
Bourdieu’s approach helps to highlight that EK&U in a social-ecological system is
always developed in relation to certain environmental problems. These should be
understood as cognitive objects that are the product of symbolic systems dynamics.
For Bourdieu the forms of social classification, the instruments of knowing and
representing reality, are connected to hierarchies. The social agents or actors that are
able to control the instruments for communicating or knowing reality are the ones that
have “symbolic power” and can exert “symbolic violence” on the rest of the social
agents. In this sense, the legitimacy of EK&U would be based on the power relations
that conform the PD. According to Bourdieu,
It is as structured and structuring instruments of communication and knowledge
that “symbolic systems” fulfill their political function, as instruments which help
to ensure that one class dominates another (symbolic violence) by bringing their
own distinctive power to bear on the relations of power which underline them
(1994: 167).
For Bourdieu, the power of a symbolic system is sustained on the tacit consent of
social agents (Bourdieu, 1994: 164). For instance, following that line of analysis,
managers, researchers, politicians and agricultural producers would agree among
themselves because they perceive issues (for instance, the importance of soybean
agriculture) in complementary ways. That is, they would classify the social world in
similar ways. According to Bourdieu, this classification also contributes to a
reproduction of a given social system:
Systems of classification which reproduce, in their own specific logic, the
objective classes, i.e. the divisions by sex, age, or position in the relations of
production, make their specific contributions to the reproduction of the power
relations of which they are the product, by securing misrecognition, and hence
the recognition, of the arbitrariness on which they are based: in the extreme case,
that is to say, when there is a quasi-perfect correspondence between the objective
order and the subjective principles of organization (as in ancient societies) the
natural and social world appears as self-evident. (…) Schemes of thought and
perception can produce the objectivity that they do produce only by producing
misrecognition of the limits of the cognition that they make possible, thereby
founding immediate adherence, in the doxic mode, to the world of tradition
experienced as a ‘natural world’ and taken for granted. The instruments of
knowledge of the social world are in this case (objectively) political instruments
which contribute to the reproduction of the social world by producing immediate
adherence to the world, seen as self-evident and undisputed, of which they are
16 the product and of which they reproduce the structures in a transformed form.
(Bourdieu, 1994: 164).8
For Bourdieu, a social field is conformed by the system of objective positions (class,
race, political affiliation, etc) and the discursive system of position-taking
(manifestos, opinions, etc) A discursive position-taking system is the space of
struggle between actors on the legitimacy of that system of objective positions
wherein they are situated. Bourdieu especially highlights that position-takings (that is
the discursive position taken by social agents or actors regarding determined issue)
play a key role when social structures undergo a period of transformation (Bourdieu,
1992: 105) In this sense, when a social system is characterized by the change in its
organization, 1) position-taking is re-activated as actors evaluate the changes and 2)
through that struggle regarding the legitimacy of the change actors might influence
the outcome of the reorganization process.
Moreover, the way to identify empirically process of legitimization is to focus on the
field of competing discourses:
It is by reference to the universe of opinion that the complementary class is
defined, the class of that which is taken for granted, doxa, the sum total of the
theses tacitly posited on the hither side of all inquiry, which appear as such only
retrospectively. (1994:168)
Therefore, in Bourdieu’s sociology a symbolic system (Figure 2) is a dynamic field
that is the product of diverse positions through which social agents aim to restore
(orthodoxy) or subvert (heterodoxy) determined classifications of the world:
Orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened, opinion, which aims, without ever
entirely succeeding, at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa, exists
only in the objective relationship which opposes it to heterodoxy, that is, by
reference to the choice –hairesis, heresy – made possible by the existence of
competing possibles and to the explicit critique of the sum total of the
alternatives not chosen that the established order implies. It is defined as a
system of euphemisms, of acceptable ways of thinking and speaking the natural
and social world, which rejects heretical remarks as blasphemies. But the
manifest censorship imposed by orthodox discourse, the official way of speaking
and thinking the world, conceals another, more radical censorship: the overt
opposition between ‘right’ opinion and ‘left’ or ‘wrong’ opinion, which delimits
8
My highlighting.
17 the universe of possible discourse, be it legitimate or illegitimate, euphemistic or
blasphemous, masks in its turn the fundamental opposition between the universe
of things that can be stated, and hence thought, and the universe of that which is
taken for granted (Bourdieu, 1994:1
Figure 2: Graphic of conformation of a Symbolic System. The universe of the undiscussed
is conformed by the doxa, the group of thesis that are taken for granted and therefore are
undisputed assumptions. The universe of what can be formulated and discussed is conformed
by the field of opinion as the space of confrontation between official discourses (orthodoxy)
and heretical discourses (heterodoxy).
18 From this conceptualization of power relations the framework for the analysis of
NRM can be represented as showed in Figure 3.
Figure 3: My theoretical framework for the analysis of power relations in NRM. The
graphic shows the articulation between the theory of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1994), the
concepts of problem domain (Gunderson, 2002) and institutionalization (Lenoir, 1994), and
the theoretical framework for the analysis of the linkage between ecosystem and NRM
(Westley, 2002). The articulation of the theory of symbolic power allows us to question
EK&U as a one-directional variable, highlighting instead three double directional feedbacks.
First, EK&U is conditioned by the PD and at the same time is a fundamental part of the
discursive conformation of it. Second, the relationship between EK&U and NRMP is not only
about informing ecosystem issues that are reprocessed by the institution, but also NRMP
determines what are the relevant ecosystem topics for institutions and social agents to develop
knowledge and state policies on. Third, EK&U is not a simple consequence of observation/
experimentation on the ecosystem. Along a NRMP and PD inform what aspects of the
ecosystem are relevant (that is, the legitimate ways to looking at the ecosystem), the
relationship between the Ecosystem and EK&U is one of mutual determination.
19 Therefore, the central theoretical assumption that guides my empirical analysis
considers position-taking as a discursive practice: this is a process of production and
circulation of meanings that contributes to the constitution of the social world
(Bourdieu, 1992; Veron, 1993; Louise Phillips and Maraianne W. Jörgensen, 2002).
This means that in any problem domain is crucial to observe the relationships between
social agents’ practices and institutions.
To sum up my theoretical framework: first, Westley’s approach (2002) highlights
the relevance of social dynamics in relation to NRM during a regime shift. Second,
Bourdieu’s approach explains how symbolic power is constitutive of any social
dynamic or process. Third, Remi Lenoir (1993) offers a method to distinguish
practical stages when they become institutionalized.
In specific, Lenoir argues that a “social problem” is not merely the result of the
functional flaws in society. In contrast, for Lenoir a social problem requires a social
work (a work between social actors) that can be analytically divided according to him
in two stages: the recognition and the legitimization of the problem as such. The
practice of recognition –that is, of making visible a situation- entails the action of
social groups interested in producing certain categories of the social world to act upon
it. The practice of legitimation entails a promotion enterprise to incorporate the new
problem into the field of social concerns of the moment. Following Lenoir, I suggest
that once an environmental problem becomes the nucleus of a PD, it presents similar
sociological characteristics to those of a social problem. These processes of
legitimization of problems may be observed in the environmental problems that NRM
usually addresses.
20 3) Research Method
This research is an explorative study of the question of power relations within
natural resource management in Uruguay during the latter’s agricultural regime shift
(2000-2010). This research is based on a qualitative method to. Two aspects have
determined the explorative character of my research. First, I re-defined my research
questions several times along as I deepen my study of the case. This strategy is known
in the literature on methodology as “emergent research design” (Morgan, 2009 and
Creswell, 2003). Second, while the research was for me an opportunity to develop an
original approach to relations of power within NRM, the types of variables to be
measured were not defined prior to the research.9 My idea of paying attention to
discursive forces emerged once I observed in Uruguay the struggles around “the
environmental impact of soybean agriculture”. This approach is usually defined as
“hypothesis-generating research” (Auerbach and Silverstein, 2003).
3.1) How did I gather the data?
During my fieldwork in Uruguay (December 2010-January 2011) I was guided
by the first formulation of my research problem. By then, I was trying to figure out if,
and in what way, state and civil society’s institutions related to agriculture in Uruguay
had changed after the development of soybean agriculture. My objective was to
observe any type of change in those institutions. Therefore, I conducted interviews
with some key state and business actors within this extensive field.
9
As one of the pioneers in CAS theory, Richard Levins, once suggested: “Sometimes the variables are
given to the system analyst: the species in a forest, the network of production and prices, the gizmos in
a radio, the molecules in an organism. That is, the ‘system’ is presented to us as a problem to be solved
rather than as an objective entity to be understood (…) The way in which a problem is framed, the
selection of the system and subsystem, is prior to systems theory but crucial to dialectics. A dialectical
approach recognizes that the ‘system’ is an intellectual construct designed to elucidate some aspect of
reality but necessarily ignoring and even distorting others” (Lewontin, R. and Levins, R., 2007: 122).
21 The interviews were opened, with guiding questions and the possibility for the
interviewees to express their own view on soybean agriculture10. A common topic in
the interviews was “sustainability”. It served as a good indicator for my interviewees
of what I was interested in and also to keep a coherent conversation. My intention was
to explore how social actors interpreted and questioned the linkages between
agriculture and the natural environment in Uruguay.
Furthermore, through the interviews I wanted to obtain inside perspectives of
what the institutions were doing and how they were interacting with each other during
the supposed agricultural regime shift. At the same time, the interviews were an
opportunity for me to have access to any unknown institutional document, event,
situation or actor. In this sense, the interviewees were for me key informants giving a
general view on the importance of the institutions involved in environmental issues
and the development of soybean agriculture. In this sense, I also wanted to know how
the social actors experienced the expansion of soybean agriculture, and what social
values and problems they associated with it. A prompt result of these meetings was
that I realized how relevant was other dimension in Uruguay’s agricultural change to
my research problem: the existence of a new business culture and the emergence of a
new farmer type related to it.
At that time it became evident for me that even though all actors agreed upon the
fact that fundamental changes had taken place in Uruguay’s agriculture, no one
observed a transformation of the institutional structures they were nevertheless their
members. Interviewees distinguished only some new agreements between institutions
or associations (e.g., between the Proyecto de Poducción Responsable and some
cooperatives), the development of some new organizations (e.g., Mesa Tecnológíca
de Oleaginosos), and the increasing relevance that some organizations had acquired
(e.g., AUSDI).
After my initial fieldwork I decided to base my study of NRM on the discursive
aspects of soybean agriculture in Uruguay. For this, first, I revised the press material I
10
One thing that was visible during my interviews, and something that I could corroborate on my later
analysis of the larger material, was that every actor has, as a professional or a member of the
government, a more or less constructed opinion on the matter. Every actor has his own “story” (which
is based much of the time on a selection of objective data) about the development of soybean
agriculture, its problems and positive sides.
22 had gathered: the reports of El Observador Agropecuario (The agricultural Observer)
of the newspaper El Observador, and the reports of El País Agropecuario (The
Agricultural Country) from the newspaper El País. Second, I also analyzed the
transcriptions of the radio program La Tertulia Agropecuaria ( Radio Station “El
Espectador”) Third, I studied business documents and reports from the agricultural
industry and agricultural professional meetings, as well as academic and state
institutions’ studies. Finally, I analyzed the interviews conducted in Uruguay by Lisa
Deutsch and Matilda Baraibar in 2007 and by me in December 2010. This overall
research gave me a first view on how the public discussion on soybean agriculture in
Uruguay had evolved throughout the last decade.
I selected social actors for the later analysis according to the following criteria: 1)
their presence in media or industry meetings, 2) the originality (as they incorporated
new themes to the discussions) of their discourse, and 3) their membership to specific
and diverse sectors of Uruguay’s SES. It goes without saying that the diversity of
opinions is also a requisite for understanding the production of symbolic systems and
power relations (Bourdieu, 1994). In this sense, I also gathered and analyzed the
discourses of other agricultural sectors that are outside the so-called soybean chain
(sectors whose activity does not contribute to the generation of value in relation to
soybeans). My first classification of actors distinguished between those actors in favor
of soybean expansion (they consider soybean agriculture as something positive for the
agriculture) and those actors that see the intensification of soybean agriculture as a
problem.
I also employ secondary data (from academic studies) throughout the thesis but
especially in the first section. This is important to me for describing the variables that
conform the dynamics driving Uruguay’s agricultural system to a regime shift. This
secondary data is taken from other studies describing the processes in place in
Uruguay. These studies are usually based on statistics from the Dirección de
Estadísticas Agropecuarias (Department of Agricultural Statistics, DIEA).
23 3.2) Strategy of Analysis
My methodological strategy for the analysis of the data is based on an
articulation of Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to symbolic systems and Eliseo Verón’s
approach to discourse analysis. As Verón (1993) states, other discourses are always
the “conditions of production” of a discourse. For Verón, discourse analysis begins
from the produced meaning: “the crystallized fragments of the social production of
meaning” (Verón, 1993). The researcher needs to look for the footprints of the
discursive conditions in the produced meaning. In this sense, institutional documents,
newspapers’ reports and interviews offered me access to the discursive conditions of
soybean agriculture in Uruguay.
Verón understands the discursive process as the creation of meaning through
the association or exclusion of different “themes” (Verón, 1993): that is, topics that
organize and dramatize the discourse. In this line, the researcher need to analyze how
individuals make use and exclude certain themes, creating their own opinions
(Phillips and Jörgensen, 2002: 67). In other words, social actors construct their
discursive position-takings by articulating in their discourse different “themes” and
confronting the latter with the themes developed by other actors.
After gathered a rich amount of material, I compared actors’ discourses on
soybean agriculture. The objective was to see which themes (e.g., technology, social
innovation, culture, environmental and social impacts) organized the different
discourses. First, I did an explorative lecture to recognize the discursive contents of
the material. Second, I identified different themes on each of those discourses. Third,
I compared the themes and look for any variation on how themes were articulated to
produce new meanings. In this sense, it is important to remark that in discourse
analysis meaning is always seen as relational: that is, a theme has meaning because it
associates or differentiates from other themes.
Following the work of Bourdieu, throughout that process of discourse analysis
my aim was also to identify how and in what moment certain “orthodoxy” on soybean
agriculture was founded and institutionalized in Uruguay.
24 My goal was to recognize that moment as a discursive act in which actors
articulated specifics themes, responding to struggles from some other sectors of
Uruguay’s society to reverse the legitimacy of soybean agriculture’s intensification.
By grasping those moments and practices of discursive orthodoxy and heterodoxy I
aimed at describing the system or field of symbolic power related to soybean
agriculture in Uruguay. In other words, the analysis of the different discursive
position-takings is crucial to describe how social actors produced a symbolic system
in relation to the new agricultural context, conforming the problem domain of
soybean agriculture. For this, is also important to grasp the institutional spaces where
the legitimization (Lenoir, 1993) of the problem was achieved: for instance, industry
meetings, seminars and conferences.
25 4) Discussion
4.1) What is new in Uruguay’s agriculture?
It is evident that since the last decade there are new conditions within Uruguay’s
agriculture (see Table 1). These conditions are directly related to the expansion of
soybean agriculture.11 These changes exemplify a case of “interacting RS” within a
SES and are the context where diverse actors develop a position-taking on soybean
agriculture and the management of natural resources. I present, synthetically, what I
grasped as the main aspects in change at each domain, their interaction and how the
SES has been reorganized in Uruguay. Even though there is scale issue regarding the
data in this analysis, some refer to a national level and other to a more regional level,
the significance of the later is not a bias for the analysis as those areas are where
agriculture has predominantly been developed.
4.1.1) Changes in land use
There are two central issues to consider if one wants to understand how land
use12 (FAO, 1998) developed in Uruguay since the last decade. First, there has been a
reduction of pastures and livestock lands and a larger presence of croplands under
“continuous agriculture” (Arbeletche, 2010). For 2004/2005, Arbeletche and Carballo
(2008) estimated that the 47% of the total agricultural area in the “Litoral” was
already under continuous crop system.13 Agricultural producers that concentrate on
crop agriculture replaced14 many of the producers that had traditionally developed
11
One fundamental aspect determining agriculture in countries such as Uruguay is the international
market and the development of the agricultural system globally (Perez, Farah and de Grammont, 2008;
Moore, 2009). Synthetically, these conditions are centered on a food trade system dominated by
transnational companies, the industrialization of the process of food production, great biotechnological
developments and a restriction on the diversity of available products (Diego Dominguez in Perez et. al.,
2008). On this section I highlight the “local” elements abstracted from the global conditions.
12
I understand land use as “the arrangements, activities and inputs that people undertake in a certain
land cover type to produce, change or maintain it.” (FAO, 1998)
13
Despite this contraction of lands and the number of producers dedicated to livestock farming, the
activity has been intensified, ranking on the highest international levels of productivity (Arbeletche, no
date).
14
See afterwards a description of the reasons that took these producers to abandon or change activities.
26 agriculture in combination with “pasturas” (winter forage) and livestock farming.15
SES Domains
Variables
Indicators
Before 2000
Ecological
Land Use
After 2000
Pastures in combination Reduction of pastures and livestock
with livestock farming∗
Ecological
Land Use
Less
than
areas and expansion of croplands
400.000 By
2008/2009
only
soybean
hectares of crop lands by croplands extended to 578.000
2000/2001
Ecological
Land use
hectares
Dominance of winter Dominance of summer crops since
crops until 2000 (60%)
Ecological
Environment
Genetic
impact
natural
erosion
of Soil erosion and reduction of
grass biodiversity
consequence
of intensification
extended grazed lands
Socioeconomic
Social structure
“Old
2000 (reaching the 70% in 2008)
consequence
and
of
use
of
agrochemicals.
producers”. Reduction of “old farmers”, incursion
Dominance of livestock of transnational companies and “new
producers.”
farmers.∗
Dominance
of
agricultural managers.
Socioeconomic
Land tenure
Land
owner
“Medianeria” ∗
Socioeconomic
Land concentration
and Land owner and short and medium
time renting
Systems with +1000 ha. Systems with +1000 ha. represent
represent the 25% of the 45 % of the total area.
total area.
Socioeconomic
Technology
Agriculture-livestock
Continuous
agriculture:
Direct
farming
agriculture, technological package
15 The
“agriculture-livestock” model was a technological solution implemented during the decade of
the ’70s that solved soil erosion problems and faced the economic stagnation of the traditional
livestock-based agricultural model. The new model implied better yields and the withdrawal in
cultivated areas (Finch, 1981; Diaz, Souto and Ferrari 2004). 27 Table 1: Characteristics of the SES before and after the expansion of soybean
agriculture by domain and variable
∗ indicators that are based on the “Litoral”, the area where agriculture have predominately been
developed in Uruguay.
Second, while crop areas have become more relevant in detriment of livestock
farming and the rotation of pastures, a change in the relation between summer/winter
crops also took place. Soybean agriculture is the most important of these crops at a
national level, covering the 40% of the total croplands with 578 mil hectares by
2008/2009 (MGAP-DIEA, 2009). By 2008 the 70% of these agricultural areas
corresponded to summer crops (Préchac, 2011) At the same time, soils exploitation
suffered intensification: up to 30% of the lands have been put under a double crop
winter/summer system (2011).
Detailed information regarding what activities were developed on the lands that
are now dedicated to soybean agriculture is not available in the official statistics
(Narbondo and Oyhantcaval, 2008). Yet it is estimated that soybean is covering great
part of areas that were formerly dedicated to livestock farming, dairy farming or other
crops such as sunflowers (2008: 97). Soybean agriculture is principally developed in
the traditional agricultural lands of Uruguay – the coastal Littoral: Colonia, Soriano,
Rio Negro, Flores and Paysandú– but it has been spreading to less traditional areas
such as the central, the northwestern and the southern areas of the country (see Figure
4) to the so-called natural grass areas. However, those are “recovered lands” that in
the past (50s) were agricultural lands (CLAES et. al, 2008). In general, these changes
suggest that not only the social organization of agriculture has been changing (see
4.3), but also the ecosystem is facing new types of stressors that might alter its
feedbacks (see section 4.2).
Figure 4: Map of Uruguay
28 29 4.1.2) Environmental impacts
One of the principal limitations during my research was that there is not yet any
study describing how Uruguay’s ecosystem might have altered its feedbacks since the
expansion and intensification of soybean agriculture. Nevertheless, there is great
amount of information on the ecological impacts –real or probable impacts– of these
processes.
The analysis of the impacts of soybean agriculture on the ecosystem, requires one
to also consider other activities, such as agricultural forestation. In this sense, the
ecological character of soybean agriculture should be studied as a part of a much
larger group of stressors upon the environment. The principal human impact on the
environment has traditionally been the introduction of cattle, which produces the
genetic erosion of natural grass as consequence of the extension of grazed lands
(CLAES et. al., 2008). After 2002, soybean agriculture and other agricultural
activities (forestation, pastures, etc.) have been expanding their use of lands – rising
the lands under agricultural use from 1.660.000 hectares in 1988/90 to a 3.500.00 in
2006/07 (2008).
Among the impacts of soybean agriculture there is the problem of soil erosion
(that is, movement of sediments) and soil degradation (that is, degradation of organic
conditions), which are both synthesized in the percentage of organic material.
Continuous soybean agriculture implies a shift in the organic composition of the soils
that can never recover their levels as they did with the incorporation of pastures
within the system. This is the most attended environmental problem in Uruguay
(Blum, Alfredo et. al, 2008: 100).
Other spheres of soybean agriculture’s impact are the superficial and
subterranean waters. The sources of contamination of those waters are the chemicals
and elements utilized in soybean agriculture: 1) nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) of
edaphic or chemical origin, which cause the eutrophication of waters, 2) heavy metals
as lead and cadmium, and 3) biocides and fertilizers.16 All these elements are
16
It is known that an exponential increase in the use of agrochemicals has been taking place in
Uruguay: for example, the use of glyphosate went from less than 1000 liters in 2001 to 1500 liters in
2002, reaching about 5000 liters in 2003. Its levels will keep rising though the years and reach over
7000 liters by 2006 (Alfredo Bruno, 2007).
30 contaminators when dumped into the waters directly (e.g., expansion of chemicals
from their agricultural application area) or indirectly through soil erosion (2008).
Soybean agriculture also impacts on biodiversity: 1) there has been a
substitution of agricultural species by monocultures, and 2) a genetic flow from soy to
other species (grasses and leguminous, corn, carrot, onion, tomato, insects, fungus). In
general, the bibliography consider that there is a process of degradation of the species
altering the ecosystem equilibrium (Blum, Alfredo et. al. 2008: 110 and Préchac,
2010:103)
4.1.3) Changes in the social structure of agriculture
At the bottom of the changes connected to the farming activities there are
important changes within its social structure of production. Yet this is not completely
new. Many authors agree on that this type of change is a tendency in Uruguay since
the last 30 years (Narbondo, 2008; Pinero, 1987 and no date; Arbeletche, 2008). The
economic concentration of agricultural activities, the expulsion of small producers out
of the market, the expansion of agricultural production and the increase in
productivity levels are characteristic processes of the last decades. They are connected
to the growing demand for agricultural products in the international market (Pinero,
no date). In this sense, as Narbondo and Oyhantcaval (2008) indicate, the primal role
of transnational companies (e.g., Cargill, Monsanto, Dreyfus) and South American
regional corporations (e.g., El Tejar, Los Grobo, Nidera) is the main aspect that
illustrate the novelty of the economic concentration during the last decade.
Furthermore, Pinero suggests that lands prices in Uruguay are a good indicator of
the processes that the country’s agriculture has been experiencing. Prices have been
rising since 1970 and showed their highest values after the economic crisis of 2002 (a
corollary of Argentina’s financial crisis), reaching a media of 2329 American dollars
per hectare in 2009.17 These levels are yet lower than the media in countries like
Argentina or Brazil, what explains the avid interest of foreign producers to settle in
Uruguay during the last decade (Pinero, no date; Neffa, 2006). As a consequence,
17
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1245910-el-precio-de-la-tierra-en-uruguay-aumento-263
31 between 2000 and 2007, 600 “productores familiares” (the cases in which a family
owns or rents land and carries out agricultural activities) abandoned their activities
and the sector reduced its crop-agriculture area from 17% to just 8%. A survey from
the DIEA for the agricultural year 2007/2008 revealed that one third of all the
producers polled in the “Litoral” had left agriculture and focused instead on livestock
farming and milk production. The reasons for leaving agriculture are: 1) the difficulty
in acceding to new lands, 2) the fact that the land they rented changed of owners, 3)
high and long lasting debts, or 4) the disintegration of the family companies they were
part of (2008: 98).
In a study considering the types of displaced producers in the same region,
Arbeletche and Carballo (2008) distinguished the great impact on two sectors (see
table 2). First, the case of the “medianeros” (producers that develop agriculture under
contracts of “medianeria”: a legal contract where the landowner assigns the
exploitation of the land to other producer in exchange for a percentage of the
production) that were not able to compete with bigger producers for the use of the
lands. Some of these producers have re-located to other geographical areas and
developed livestock farming or started to provide services (fumigation, planting and
harvesting) to the new big agricultural producers. Second, the case of “land owners”
with high debts that sold their lands or rented them to the new producers. Some
producers of this sector started also providing services to the new producers, making
use of the agricultural machinery they owned, or relocated to other areas (Préchac, 2011; Narbondo and Oyhantcaval, 2008). In this sense, Pinero suggests that the most
significant social impact of these processes is the displacement of the local landowner
bourgeoisie.18 Moreover, Narbondo and Oyhantcaval suggest that the producers that
by official statistics are included under productores familiares are nothing but small
capitalists. Furthermore, hypothetically, the impact of soybean agriculture on
producers that conform to the Latin-American notion of “peasants” (owners of small
areas of land) might be higher on other areas of the country where big agricultural
enterprises had been historically absent (2008).
18
Pinero explains this phenomenon on the base of a cultural tendency from this social sector to sustain
much from rents rather than from productive activities. Once the state could not afford the traditional
liquation of debts of this sector after the many years of crisis, those producers got rid of their lands,
taking advantage of the rising prices of the lands (Pinero, s/f, p. 1).
32 What is crucial as factor of social change is that a new group of producers,
identified as “pools de siembra,” absent before 2000 appeared in the agricultural
market. In just a few years, they passed to control up to the 45% of Uruguay’s
agricultural area (2008: 96). Pools de siembra are a kind of financial companies that
engage in agricultural activities by buying or especially renting large areas of land and
developing intensive soybean agriculture through the use of biochemicals and the
employment of new technological processes such as “siembra directa” (direct
planting19). The development of these investments has resulted in the concentration of
agricultural production while diverse production unities are being reduced to one
single property (see Table 2). Connected to this is the fact that the explosion of
soybean agriculture is based on short and medium time renting – which passed from
encompassing the 26% of lands in 2000 to involve the 48% of lands in 2007, and the
decrease of areas under “medianeria” –which passed from encompassing the 26% of
lands in 2000 to involve the 16% of lands in 2007. By 2007 the 65% of croplands
were exploited by no-owners (Arbeletche, Ernst and Hoffman, 2011).
19
In a few words, direct planting is an agricultural method that excludes tillage activities retaining crop
residues and having less impact on soil structure. This technique requires the use of special machinery
to achieve sowing and an extended use of herbicides.
33 Year
2000
2005
2007
Old producers
Ha.
%
Ha.
%
Ha.
%
Family producers
62016
16.6
51520
12,0
51585
8,3
Small “medianeros”
55370
14,8
38342
9,0
45331
7,3
Big agriculturelivestock farmers
26086
7,0
24923
5,8
19060
3,1
Middle Businessman
87987
23,5
53217
12,4
61600
9,9
Big “medianeros”
86979
23,2
28002
6,5
27144
4,3
Big livestockagriculture farmers
31644
8,4
31897
7,4
44550
7,1
Others
24538
6,6
9597
2.2
39760
6,4
Year
2000
2005
2007
New Producers
Ha.
%
Ha.
%
Ha.
%
Managers
0
0
84990
18,8
181687
29,1
Agriculture-livestock
farmers
0
0
65646
15,3
95418
15,3
Of Continuous
Agriculture
0
0
40246
9,4
58705
9,4
Table 2: Changes in the agricultural area by group and type of producer in absolute numbers
and percentage of the total agricultural areas for the years 2000, 2005 and 2007 (From
Arbeletche 2010)
34 4.1.4) Agricultural managers and their organization of agriculture
As I indicated before, the development of soybean agriculture is strongly related
to the incursion of transnational capital in food production (Narbondo, 2008; Perez et.
al., 2008) At the local level, the identity of the hegemonic20 producers has also
changed, exemplifying what some authors recognize as one of the central aspects of
the “new agriculture in Latin America” (Perez et.al, 2008): the dominance of regional
corporations.
In an accurate description of the group of Uruguay’s new producers, Arbeletche
and Carballo (2008) distinguish the AM as a key agricultural actor21. They are mainly
crop farmers with nearly no activity diversification, they lack or have little active
assets and canalize investment founds from outside the agricultural sector.
They can be defined as “unities of business management” that get settled on
lands through renting or systems of “medianeria”. They make contracts of services as
machinery or other agricultural inputs (Arbeletche and Carballo, 2008), basing their
contractual relationships under conditions of exclusiveness, priority and dependence.
They obligate at the same time their providers to the continuous improvement in the
quality of the services.
They are present on many countries of the region and manage “risk” by
diversifying the regions within Uruguay. Another strategy is the association with
other companies –establishing informational networks- in a model that in their own
opinion “exceeds traditional competitiveness between economic actors” (2008).
Regarding agricultural activities per se they perform a “plan” usually called as
“schedule technology” (2008). This is an “agricultural package” where the statistic
estimations of yields by determined combination of different crops/ land rents/
technological inputs can be used to anticipate gross profit based on the conditions of
20
I use the term “hegemonic” not only in reference to the economic dominance of these actors but also
in relation to their capacity to impose forms of view over the organizational patterns that agriculture
should follow. For a comprehensive approach to the concept of “hegemony” refer to Raymond
Williams (1977) A later treatment of the concept can be found in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
(1985).
21
Among these “agricultural managers” there are companies as El Tejar, Agronegocios del Plata,
Cosechas del Uruguay, MSD and Garmet.
35 the international market (2008)22. On the other hand, these actors are known to base
their activity on “continuous agriculture” (Préchac, 2010). The AM whom covered the
29,1 % of the total agricultural lands and the 35,2 % of soybean agriculture by
2006/2007, had the 84% of the croplands under continuous system (Préchac, 2010).
One important aspect of this agricultural system is the role of the “technological
package”. These are understood as the combination of “direct farming” with
genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) and the application of insecticides such as
the known glyphosate.
On the other hand, the development of other economic activities is in direct
relation to this new organization of the agriculture. In first place, a new agricultural
service sector has developed providing fumigation, planting and harvesting services to
these producers. The Mesa Tecnológica de Oleaginosos (Technological Round Table
of Oilseed Producers, MTO) indicates that for the agricultural year 2007/2008 this
sector have a turnover of 35 millions American dollars for services related to soybean
agriculture (Préchac, 2010). The majority of these companies are associated since
2007 under the Cámara Uruguaya de Servicios Agropecuarios (Uruguayan
Association of Agricultural Services, CUSA) In second place, the transport sector
experienced a great boost. Between 2002/2003 and 2007/2008 an addition of 5,1
millions tons were transported, from which the 55 % were soybeans. This meant 57,5
millions extra in American dollars.
22
This means that the articulation between this SES and the international economy is now observable
within the means of production. I will get back to this point later.
36 4.1.5) Uruguay’s agricultural system adaptive cycle
The continuity of the dynamism requires –besides the availability of the necessary
resources– the favorable evolution of the context for the development of the business,
that within its locals conditions might require the adaptation and adjustment of the
aspects wherein any deficiency that might restrict a growing process could be identified.”
Gonzalo Souto, Los rasgos de la agricultura de secano en Uruguay (no date; my
translation)
During the last two decades of the 21th century Uruguay’s agricultural system
entered into what is called a “release phase” marked by the financial crises of 19821984 and 1999-2002.23 Uruguay’s former SES, whose major function was livestock
farming, had became more rigid through out its “conservation phase” because it was
highly dependent on the liquidation of producers’ debts, which prompted the system
to be “increasingly vulnerable to disturbance” (Walker and Salt, 2002: 77). In short,
the dependence on credit facilities made it vulnerable to the external financial crisis
that affected the Uruguayan state’s financial liquidity. Pinero describes this process
clearly:
“many livestock producers expected to obtain profits not only from their own
production but from obtaining benefits from the State. The pronounced
agriculture’s indebtedness, which breaks out with the crises of 1982 and 2002,
are an expression of this situation. There was formerly a long-lasting tradition of
liquation of agriculture’s debt based on State’s decisions and the pressure of
agriculture’s associations. This liquation generated profits. The crisis of 1982
and the long process of maintaining debts since then, with only partial liquation,
plus the crisis of 2002, in which no benefits of this type where granted, obligated
many landowners to get rid of lands and take advantage of the higher land
prices” (Pinero, no date: 3, my translation).
Those successive financial shocks, and especially the one between 1999-2002
(Fernando Antía, no date; 1986; 2001), produced the conditions for the release of a
key resource from this agricultural sector: that is, the lands. The Uruguayan SES
consequently arrived to a release phase and crossed a threshold when the liquation of
debts was no longer possible. As a result, several producers abandoned their activities
(see 4.1.3). Therefore, the financial crisis and the later arrival of new capitals were
23
For a deeper analysis of many variables of these financial processes see, for example, Fernando
Antía (no date; 1986; 2001)
37 key drivers for a shift in the agricultural system.
Once the former agricultural producers could not initiate a new cycle of
economic accumulation, the “tightly bound” lands became a key “source for
reorganization and renewal” in a new phase (2002: 78). Moreover, there are also a
group of resources that were put in disposition for a new reorganization of the
agricultural system: natural resources (e.g., land and other ecosystem services) and
social resources (e.g., producers that started to function as a working force, providing
services to the new producers; scientific researchers that can now play a key role
adapting transgenic seeds to local climate and soil conditions; and a rich group of
agricultural institutions that became organization platforms for the whole agricultural
industry). These are all natural and social resources produced in earlier conservation
phases. Yet, beyond the illustrative case of producers that got rid of lands, the
resources are just possibilities for a new reorganization phase. That is, my point in the
study is that the institutional warrant for these resources to become available in a new
agricultural regime has required the core of the agricultural industry and the
Uruguayan state to legitimate the “new agriculture” in symbolic and cultural terms.
The arrival of new producers and capitals from Argentina (Arbeletche, 2007)
marked the initiation of the new phase. This reorganization phase in Uruguay’s
agriculture has been characterized by the appearance of those producers. It has been
anchored in several elements I stated above: a new profile of producer defined as
“unit of business management”, new information networks between agricultural
companies, and the articulation between “schedule technology” and “technological
package.”24. Moreover, some sectors of Uruguay’s rural bourgeoisie (e.g.,
Agronegocios Del Plata) have associated with the Argentinean companies, becoming
also “specialists” and representatives of the “new agriculture”. The direct relation
between agriculture and the development of other economic sectors such as
communications, services and transport is also a novelty (see section 4.1.3). This
socio-economic process (the arrival of new producers) represented the factor that
In this specific reorganization phase the “group of entrepreneurs” was no released from the previous
agricultural system, as Walker and Salt suggest (2002: 78). These were “K-strategists” from another
agricultural system (Argentina) that operated across larger spatial scales –risk diversification: they are
present in different countries and regions and also “reduce the impact of variability through their own
mutually reinforcing relationships” (2002:76) and “information network” strategies. This clearly
indicates that Uruguay’s social-ecological system is part of a larger world-social-ecological system of
food production. 24
38 would promote several interacting socio-economic and ecological shifts (see Figure
5), altering the SES structure.
Figure 5: Interaction of shifts across dimensions and scales. The graphic shows the
interaction between regime shifts of different domains and scales in Uruguay during the
period 2000-2010.
The new hegemony, economic and cultural predominance, of “gerenciadores
agrícolas” (agricultural managers than control the pools de siembra) is a new attractor
(the representative of a new systems identity, Walker, 2006: 78) that will mark the
beginning of a phase of economic expansion and economic and natural resource
concentration (see 4.3). In a very short period of time, just after the arrival of these
new producers and the expansion of “continuous agriculture,” a growth in
productivity took place (see Table 3). This represents what in the literature is called a
“rapid growth phase.” The latter is characterized by an intensive exploitation of
“available resources” (2002:76). Between 2005 and 2009 agricultural production
(measured in dollars) in Uruguay was multiplied by three times. The most significant
increase is related to the crops that constitute the principal rotation system: soy –
39 whose production rose from 17,63% of the total agricultural in 2005 to 32.59% in
2009- and wheat –whose production rose from 8,81% of the total agricultural
production in 2005 to 20,22% in 2009.
Year
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
Total
876,6
1008,4
1444,6
2509,3
2435,3
Wheat
77,3
115,6
208,1
546,2
492,6
Rice
176,1
169,2
230,5
392,0
292,2
Soy
154,6
167,9
316,0
581,1
793,6
Others
214,3
301,7
329,2
587,9
447,6
Table 3: Production in agriculture by year and sub-sector in millions of American dollars.
Source: DIEA, 2010
Even though agriculture in Uruguay is still based on private accumulation and the
concentration of resources (Pinero, no date; Narbondo and Oyhantcaval, 2008;
Arbeletche, no date; 2006; 2007; 2008), there is in my view a RS characterized by the
presence of a new attractor -the hegemony of the “gerenciadores agricolas- where the
principal economic function is the production of oilseeds. Furthermore, although the
reorganization of resources conduced to a rapid grow phase in Uruguay’s agriculture
and to the concentration of lands as well as capital, Uruguay’s SES is far from
arriving to the late stagnation stage peculiar to a conservation phase. Even more, as
Gonzalo Souto notices, growing possibilities are still played around the reorganization
of resources. In my interpretation, the promotion of a NRMP in Uruguay, as a social
practice that aims to link the social and the ecological sub-systems as well as securing
the flow of natural resources and ecosystem services, plays a key role within the SES’
current reorganization phase.
40 4.2) The discourses around soybean agriculture in contemporary Uruguay:
actors’ interpretations and positions
In this section I explain how different actors have expressed their concern on the
expansion of soybean agriculture in Uruguay between 2000 and 2010. Following a
chronological order I describe the trajectory of the discussion along the years; I
identify how actors have developed various discourses on soybean agriculture,
looking for the emergence of themes along the years and the association or exclusion
of these themes within every discourse. Thereafter I define a symbolic field based on
the complementation or differentiation between the themes that conform each
discursive practice.
4.2.1) Soybean agriculture in the media
Between 2000 and 2004 El Observador Agropecuario confirmed and somehow
supported the expansion of the utilization of genetic modified organisms (GMO’s) in
agriculture. It also sustained that soy has successfully adapted to Uruguay’s
environmental conditions. The newspaper pays special attention to the coming
expansion of soybean by newly Argentine producers. According to El Observador
Agropecuario, this expansion promises technological development and more
competitive soybean prices due to larger economies of scale. During these years the
most characteristic aspect is a descriptive vocabulary that confirms a new
phenomenon that, at the same time, identifies two central consequences: competitive
prices and technological development. In this regard, it is clear that the newspaper did
not consider any problem on soybean agriculture along as soybean production was
just expanding and its impacts were not evident. Yet after 2005 the newspaper started
to give space to actors involved in soybean agriculture (for instance, Marcos Guigou
from Agronegocios Del Plata and members from the company Barraca Erro), to
emphasize the issue of technological innovation and to consider that the limitations on
the exploitation of natural resources is a technological challenge.
41 4.2.2) The discourse on a “new agriculture”: global market, technological and
social innovation.
The year 2005 shows a transition in the appreciation of the new agricultural
technologies. For example, many articles still insist on the control methods of
soybean’s diseases. Yet a discursive shift is also observable then and is here also
where the soybean chain actors begging to gain some place in the newspapers. In first
place, the newspaper’s approach to technological development is anymore a mere raw
exaltation of “the greatness” of the new technologies25. For example, in an interview
with Marcos Guigou – representative of the agricultural corporation Agronegocios del
Plata – El Observador Agropecuario highlights sharply that “in Dolores they are
willing to grow something more than soybeans” (Observador 2005/04/22)
The article presents an image of a “new agriculture” and let Guigou exhibit the
several dimensions that conform their company model as a project for a community:
“to have the human resources trained behind a common objective” (Observador
2005/04/22). Guigou briefly describes the production strategy based on crop-planning
through a statistic system and the cooperation between companies. In this context, the
technological theme acquires a special discursive relevance: given a new economic
opportunity (“what is going on in the world”), technological innovation (direct
planting, analysis software, harvesters) and social innovations (association with other
companies, human resource training, reorganization of productive sectors) contributes
to the development of a “new agriculture”. Yet, given a new economic situation
where the technological and the social conditions change, Guigou also recognizes
how this overall process is presenting a new challenge in relation to the natural
resources:
The future is about connecting natural resources, comparative economic
advantages, human resources, and the national research on technologies –
especially technological networks – to fully integrate agricultural producers.26
This specific challenge is the opportunity to identify roles within that large
community. This discourse, based on the articulation of themes such as technological
25
As for example in the headline “Cargil, leader in seed in Argentina, showed its great potential”, El
Observador, 2005/ 11/ 22
26
Marcos Guigou, El Observador, April 22 2005
42 and social innovation, has as interlocutor a “community” identified as the co-actor of
this enterprising. The businessman calls the state (as political representative) to
establish a “good tuning” between the natural resources and Uruguay’s economic
comparative advantages. For Guigou, the agriculture-livestock farming system of
natural resource exploitation is no longer profitable and calls to establish a new
technological-institutional framework (supported by the state and corporations) to
develop a “new agriculture”. He calls research institutes to adapt and select new
“network technologies” to make the “tuning” possible.
Similarly, in late 2005,
Guigou affirmed in El Observador:
We observe a better integration among actors, from the commercial sector to the
public sector. Examples of this trend are the Mesa Tecnológica de Oleaginosos
(Forum of Technology and Oilseeds Producers), a better sensibility of the state
institutes of technology to the productive demands of the private sector (INIA,
Facultad de Agronomía), and a greater interest of the commercial enterprises and
the agricultural corporations to maintain a greater ‘environmental balance’.27
In effect, the formation of the MTO and the cooperation of the Instituto Nacional de
Investigación Agropecuaria (National Institute of Agricultural Research, INIA) and
the Facultad de Agronomía (Faculty of Agronomy, FAGRO) signified a greater
entanglement of the private, the cooperative and the state sectors within soybean
agriculture. With the course of the years, as I develop later, this cooperation will have
significant results in terms of agreements on relevant issues for the production of
environmental knowledge.
On the other hand, biotechnology is also largely present in the press since
2005. This is a sub-theme within technological “innovation”, but it is usually a topic
per se and associated to the possibility of “having a role in the world-food system,
responding to its demands and satisfying global human necessities”. For example, El
Observador Agropecuario praises biotechnologies by arguing that they “improve
production” and “contribute to the world’s food security.”28 This theme of “food
security” is common in the discourse of major corporations within the soybean chain,
the local companies and some experts. In this sense, the economic interest of making
27
Marcos Guigou, El Observador, December 2006
28
The newspaper bases its argument on the declarations of Wayne Perrot, a researcher from the
University of Georgia, during the Conference called “Biotechnological revolution: chance or threat?”
organized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
43 use of the natural resources has its footprint on the discourses of these actors in the
form of a “moral responsibility with worlds-food-security”.
Biotechnology is the medium per excellence to that end, but it requires that
“the community” conform to a project of technological and social innovation. For
example, in the same article I quoted and in tune with Guigou’s views, Jorge Trigo, a
prestigious member of the scientific community in Argentina and a member of the
Consultant firm CEO, sustains that “biotechnology is much more than transgenic
products.” He affirms that biotechnology is a whole “new science” that requires
strong investments because this technology is greatly imported from abroad. Trigo
argues that states and corporations need to “create the conditions to access to
biotechnology” and assure that the latter would be used efficiently by the different
agricultural producers involved.
In synthesis, during these years it is observable some discourses that have a
“new agriculture” as its object. Marcos Guigou, as an actor that produces a discourse
on the “new agriculture”, makes use of themes such as “technology and social
innovation”. For an interpreter, “technology and social innovations” is the sign of a
“new agriculture”. On the other hand, from this articulation of themes, materialized as
the discourse on the “new agriculture”, it is possible to observe the footprints of its
conditions of production: the economic interest of taking advantage of a (moral)
necessity of feeding the world and exploiting Uruguay’s human and natural resources.
Within this condition of production there is “the community” as the subject to whom
the discourse is addressed; a figure that is later distinguished as the State,
representative of “producers” and “Scientifics”.
4.2.3) Critics on biotechnology and alternative discourses to the “new
agriculture”
Biotechnology has been also centre of the critic to soybean agriculture from
voices that questioned its expansion. For example, Sylvia Guerra and Ceriani, both
producers of milk and also members of the Government of Paysandú expressed
44 discomfort on many occasions.29 Another exemplary case is the strong struggle of
families and producers of the town La Palmita in the province of Canelones against
the installation of soybean agriculture on the zone: the community sustained that the
actual model of soybean agriculture (intensive agriculture) was going to have negative
impacts on their economic activities and health. These discourses of productores
familiares counteracted the positive assumptions of a “new agriculture”, arguing on
the economic effects that the environmental impacts of soybean agriculture have on
them.
The discussion on biotechnology and transgenic in Uruguay is clearly divided in
two opposite sectors30. On one side there are the critics of Genetic Modified
Organisms (GMO’s): for instance, the members of Centro Latino Americano de
Ecología Social (Latin American Centre of Social Ecology, CLAES), the Asociación
de Productores Orgánicos del Uruguay (The Association of Uruguay’s Organic
Producers, APODU), and the NGO’s RAPAL-UY, Red de Amigos de la Tierra
(Network of the Friends of the Earth). On the other side there are the consultant firms
such as SERAGRO, the Oficina de Política y Programación Agropecuaria of the
MGAP (Office of Policy and Agricultural Planning, OPYPA), the Cámara Uruguaya
de Semillas (Business Organization of Seeds), and the extensive field of producers
and agricultural suppliers.
The group of critics base its argument questioning certain assumptions on
GMO’s (productivity) and highlighting the social impacts of the agriculture based on
them. For instance, the Executive Secretary of CLAES, Eduardo Gudynas, questions
the idea that the application of biotechnologies in itself has resulted in high yields,
giving examples form Brazil,31 Bolivia and Uruguay. At the same time, Gudynas
emphasizes that the geographical expansion of soybean agriculture has put small and
medium farmers out of the market, and has forced also the relocation of livestock
farming.32 Gudynas also considers that the utilization of GMO’s may affect other
29
http://www.rallt.org/PAISES/LATINOAMERICA/URUGUAY/uru23.html
30 For a background on this discussion see Appendix 8.1
31
Gudynas bases his commentaries on the rapport from the FAO that compares yields between
modified and conventional soybean in Brasil (FAO, 2006: 81)
32
Usually this impact on small and medium producers attributed to the intensive soybean model is
sustained with examples from other countries of the region such as Argentina or Brasil. One possible
reason of this is that in Uruguay there is only very general data about this process and the real impacts
on the activities of small farmers is much unknown. As I indicated before, the more direct impact of the
45 organic farming activities. For example, he mentions that organic meat producers face
the difficulty of recognizing whether soybean or corn rations are contaminated with
transgenic elements.33
In the same light, Hugo Bértola, organic producer from APODU, argues that it is
necessary not only to consider economic aspects in the discussion of soybean
agriculture, but also the social and environmental aspects. Bértola mentions the work
of Maria Stella Zerbino and Amalía Rios at the conference “Sustentabilidad de la
intensificacion Agricola en el Uruguay” (“Sustainability of the agricultural
intensification in Uruguay”) at INIA La Estanzuela, where they analyze the
environmental consequences of the homogenization of the environment, the impact of
glyphosate in floristic biodiversity and the weed resistance to glyphosate. This type of
impact are know to have direct consequences for other activities such as apiculture:
It is evident that the apiculture has been changing, and for worst, since the
soybeans are here, our area has been decreasing (…) all weeds are gone, because
they use glyphosate on the soyplants (…) we have lost a lot of flowering (...) that
were what we needed to sustain the beehives. (…) The beehive needs, apart from
quantity, a variety of flowers, and that’s what we have lost with the soybeans and
the indiscriminate use of glyphosate Apiculture Farmer from CADOL, Lisa and
Matilda, Interview 2007
The negative impacts on biodiversity that the expansion of monocultures and the
use of agrochemical have, permits Hugo Bértola to oppose soybean agriculture with
the slogan “Natural Uruguay.” In contrast, “organic farming” respect and represent
the “nature” that defines the personality of the country. Bértola indicates that this
branding has its own history, visible for example in the work that the INIA has been
doing. At the same time, Bértola indentifies the productores familiares as the strategic
actor for the country sustainability, remarking that the need of them is not only
economic and social “but also biophysical.”
On March 2006 Gudynas and Prado insisted that the discussion should be about
the agricultural policies and SERAGRO called to “experts” to be part of the
discussion. Gudynas and Prado understand “agricultural policy” as the group of
policies that the State puts in practice to follow determined agricultural models: for
expansion of soybean agriculture that explain the decrease in “old producers” numbers and importance
in Uruguay’s economy is within sectors that Narbondo and Oyhantcaval define more as “small
capitalist” and that now are offering services to the big companies.
33
El Pais Agropecuario, “El debate debe ser sobre las politicas agropecuarias”, Marzo 2006.
46 instance, “an organic and socially responsible production model or one that follows
international companies interests”.34 In this sense, for Gudynas and Prado the soybean
question is a political issue and SERAGRO considers that it is a question of scientific
veracity.
One response of the actors in favor of GMO’s to those concerns is to argue that
there are no registered negative impacts on human health and that there is no better
evidence on the goodness of biotechnology such as the fact that greater areas of the
world’s agriculture are being developed with such technologies.35
The actors in favor of GMO’s respond the critique on the impacts of the
homogenization of crops and the use of strong agrochemicals on biodiversity and the
expulsion of small-scale farmers by highlighting the possibility of resolving problems
with “good practices”. For instance, SERAGRO, an agricultural consultant firm from
Uruguay and editor of the newspaper El País Agropecuario, pretends to counteract
the critics on monocultures mentioning Gustavo Grobocopatel (owner of the company
Los Grobos from Argentina) reference to Argentinean producers’ recognition of the
necessity of “rotations.”36 The actors in favor of GMO’s replace the social focus of
the critique on soybean agriculture (the drive out of small and medium farmers) with
a discussion on the attention to “good practices” and how agrochemicals can rather
cooperate with the meat industry in Uruguay by controlling lawns in the grasslands.
In this sense, much of the discourse of soybean businessmen and other private
actors as Consultant firms consists in stressing the value of biotechnology in terms of
change and progress, while at the same time representing the concerns on
biotechnology as irrational assumptions and fearful views. For soybean businessmen
and these private actors, those fears would be created by ideological preoccupations:
they are said to be irrational myths or influences that are not at the level of serious
science and economic modernization. In short, businessmen represent any fear on
biotechnology as anachronic, typical of social perspectives that condemn Uruguay to
underdevelopment and inaction. For example, for Guigou, “Uruguayans’ resistance to
change is translated most of the time in inaction or technological fears that stem from
34
Idem.
See Daniel Bayce in La tertulia Agropecuaria: Trangenicos: angeles o demonios?
36
El País Agropecuario, Un debate público necesario. Febrero 2006.
35
47 ideological assumptions (a clear example is the fear on transgenic products).”37 In the
same direction, SERAGRO sustains that “the worst enemy of biotechnology and
GMO is the ignorance of the people,” “Uruguay needs to rationally use all the tools
that modernity has put in its disposition, leaving aside rejections that are based on
concerns that are far away from the real world in which we live and compete.”38
Following Pierre Bourdieu (1994), questioning the arbitrariness of the principles
of specific world classifications (for instance that markets are the central spheres of
human relationships or that GMO’s and biotechnologies are positive for the country)
marks the necessity of producing the orthodoxy as the acceptable way of speaking
about the natural and social world. Dominant actors consider then those
preoccupations on GMO’s as blasphemies opposed to the system of euphemisms that
conforms the orthodoxy (scientificity, modernization). In this sense, the emergence of
critiques on the expansion of intensive soybean agriculture39 marks the necessity of a
discourse that can confront those critics as illegitimate.
4.2.4) The discourse on the “new agriculture” and the recognition of the
environmental issues
The technological theme was always part of the media agenda. What changed
with the course of the years is that technology began to be associated with the issue of
“environmental sustainability”. I have demonstrated before how the discourse on a
“new agriculture” considered relevant to produce a full interconnection between
natural resources and productive forces (producers and research institutions). In the
discourse of the “new agriculture” after 2006, the question of “natural resources” will
be progressively focused on the theme of “environmental impacts”. At the same time,
the “environmental impact” theme will give to the scientific researchers a clearer role
within the “new agriculture”.
37
El Observador, 29 of December, 2006
País Agropecuario, Un debate público necesario. Febrero 2006. 39
It is not my intention to affirm that the origin of this type of critique was this very historical context
(that would imply a larger historical research) but that actors made use of them in this context and that
this implied a counterpoint and questioning of the interpretations on the agricultural changes.
38 El
48 The existence of critical interpretations of soybean agriculture and biotechnology
pressured some actors to produce a stronger discourse on the expansion of soybean in
Uruguay. In this manner, I argue that the gradual inclusion of environmental issues in
the discourse of the “new agriculture” after 2006 is a discursive strategy to deal with
discourses from organic producers and other actors, which represented a threat to the
legitimacy of soybean agriculture’s expansion. What is at stake on the discursive level
is the dominance of the acceptable way of speaking about soybean agriculture’s
expansion and its problems (Bourdieu, 1986). Symbolically, the association between
“environmental impact” and “technological innovation” can be considered one
important step in the rationalization of the “new agriculture” discourse. There are two
types of production of meaning that pursue the appropriation of the “environmental
impact” theme in two ways.
One example of this association of themes can be observed on a session of the
radio program La Tertulia Agropecuaria (The Agricultural Discussion)40 Jorge
Sawchick - Director of the Program “Production and Environmental Sustainability” of
the INIA- was invited to talk on the topic of “agricultura de precision” (precision
agriculture) The topic was introduced to the discussion in association to the
impressive machinery observed at the ExpoAgro 2006.41
Sawchick explained that Argentinean producers had been applying this
technology on the coastal area of Uruguay. This method of agriculture makes use of
diverse techniques (for instance, Global Positioning System, satellites images and
Geographic Information Systems) that permit to identify the productive variability of
lots and to make a more efficient use of agricultural inputs. Sawchick noticed the
importance of precision agriculture on the economic and environmental benefice of
making a rational use of inputs. On the other hand, Sawchick manifested the necessity
of developing research to follow this technological innovation; a position that is in
line with the challenge for human resources that Marcos Guigou manifested years
before.
40
This radio program has two main themes when it deals with soybean agriculture: 1) technological
development and 2) the overall conditions/ the situation of the agriculture in Uruguay since the last
decade.
41
The AgroExpo is a rural event where all the sectors of the agricultural industry participate,
presenting the later technological developments in the sector. See La Tertulia Agropecuaria,
“Agricultura de precision”, 12 of Septermber , 2006
49 After a few years, “precision agriculture” will be recognized as one of the
principal technological tools for the management of soil erosion in intensive
agriculture. With this recognition, the discursive association between “technology”
and “environmental impact” became more explicit, as it is seen for example on a later
advertisement from the company ADP from 2011:
Get to know the potential of your fields and achieve a high productive
impact with low inversions. Get to respect the whole capacity of your land,
preventing the erosion and preserving the environment. Get to know your
chacra1 meter by meter and make together with ADP a correct management, at
the right place and at the opportune time, in a responsible way. We have already
started.42
In this context, the business sector defines the question of the sustainability of the
natural resources in terms of efficiency on the impacts (soil use and agrochemical
contamination) based on the expansion of knowledge on the natural resources and the
relative automation of agricultural activities. In this sense, natural resource
management has become more dependent on the quantification and systematization of
the knowledge on nature. For the farming activities, this new technology implies a
whole new bunch of instruments that require the adaptation of the human resources to
them. This is why actors claim that one of the keys for the further development of
agriculture in Uruguay is that the state would assume the necessity of a change in
education and that scientific and producers’ organizations would collaborate in the
development of technologies.
Another example of this rationalization in the discourse through the association
between “technology” and “environmental impact” can be observed on the media
discussion on whether soybean agriculture changes are “structural” (that is to say, a
permanent, long-lasting phenomena) or a “temporal” phenomenon.43 The acceptance
of the fact that it is a permanent phenomenon legitimizes the necessity of
concentration of Uruguay resources (scientific research, education, infrastructure
development) under that project.44At this occasion, a new theme with the property of
42 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=984VAyFH8OQ 43
44
See La Tertulia Agropecuaria, 28 of April, 2007
Idem.
50 synthesizing both “social and technological innovation” as signs of the “new
agriculture” gained space: “cultural change”.
The important change that is taking place today is taking place in culture, in
technology, in the means of production, in the type of businessmen involved in
soybean agriculture. Guillermo Vilas, member of the Ratio Program La tertulia
Agropecuaria, my translation.
There is a change in organization, in culture, in the management of information.
Today any agricultural producer manages a great deal of information. It is
nothing comparable to the situation of ten years before. The principal change is
connected to those issues. Marcos Guigou, ADP, my translation.
Do we want workers with trucks with air conditioning, with activated carbon
filters, with the possibility of earning good wages? That is why I talk about
professional training. Sadly, today we need lesser workers per hectare to produce
the same quantity of agricultural products that we needed thirty years before. Yet
today’s workers can go during the night to their homes in the city and watch
television with their families. Workers now have a good wage and a car. They
are trained and use computers. It is fabulous the change that it has taken place.
Marcos Guigou, ADP, my translation.
All that is related to the conservation of soil is connected to the state. Yet it is
also connected to a cultural problem. We need to become conscious that we need
to take care of what we have. Cultural changes do not take place from night to
day. They are done for decades. If we think that is structural, let’s prepare
ourselves for make it structural. Let’s train the people to take care of the
environment. Guillermo Villas, my translation.
Villas and Guigou agree that the expansion of agriculture is a phenomenon that will
be permanent and that there are some “changes” which have taken place. Those
changes are seen in different levels that I already showed defined the “new
agriculture”: organization, management of information and new technologies45. On
the other hand, they make a constant allusion to a “cultural change”. Although
“culture” is never really defined, in the first two cites it appears as some sort of
“attitude” towards agriculture, as a “capacity” or “spirit” of the producers.
Some type of “new capacity” is also observed on workers. Guigou respond to the
critics on the expansion of unemployment46 connecting “technological innovation” to
better “conditions of life” for workers, “at night they can go home and watch
television in family”. Thus, Guigou identifies a change in a cultural sphere (everyday
45
In this sense, these arguments acknowledge the agricultural model carried out by what Arbeletche
and Carballo (2008) defined as “gerenciadores agricolas” as the hegemonic: the factors that conform a
permanent change are key characteristics of those economic actors.
46
During the radio session a discussion around employment and FAO’ s rapports on soybean
agriculture took place.
51 practices) as a new relationship between workers and diverse devices: cars, computers
and televisions. In his argument, changes exceed the production sphere and impact on
everyday life practices47; interestingly, this change in everyday life is connected to the
development of new capacities within the working force, “workers are trained and use
computers and therefore have a better wage and life.”
In a similar way, the unclear term “cultural change” in the context of the first two
quotes can be also explained as “a new relationship between producers, technologies
and their organization.” This type of association can be observed more clearly in an
interview in 200748 with other actor of the soybean industry, Daniel Torres from the
company Cargill:
The farmer that continues is the one that is more like a businessman, he does not
spend so much time on the machines (for instance, trucks), the type of producer
has change. On a great deal is due to the soy. Yet it is also due to globalization in
general. It is a cultural thing… in Uruguay the culture was centered in the cities
and Montevideo, and the people from the country with big restrictions to
academic and cultural education, that people could not follow the process.
(…)That is the cultural change of the soy that can be positive and which already
has taken place in Argentina. Let’s see, the Uruguayan farmer do not work with
agronomists, he works in base of his traditions. (…) the farmer was used to get
free agricultural assistance from the state and that has been now reduced. (…)
On the contrary, the people who came from Argentina do not work without
agronomists, they delegate all the technical aspects on the agronomist, who is
now a professional consultant.49
Torres, alike Guigou and Vilas, defines “cultural change” as the change in the
relationship between the producer and the means of production: “the producers that
continue in existence do not ride so often the agricultural machinery,” “the cultural
change that arrived with the Argentineans is that they delegate all technical activities
on the agronomist.”
He also sustained that the “new culture” is part of the globalization process.
This is in concordance with other producers that recognize the development of the
“society of the information” as a change in culture:
Today Uruguay is being participant of the globalizing and integrative
processes that are changing the culture of business in general and particularly
47
Similarly, in an interview later in 2007 (Deutsch and Baraibar, 2007), Guigou expressed “before in
Dolores there were no one in the streets and now you see full restaurants and hotels.”
48
Marilda Baraibar, Lisa Deutsch, Interview with Daniel Torres, Cargill, Paysandú, Uruguay,
December 2007.
49
Idem.
52 agricultural business; this has generated the formation of newtworks that through
the use of the new technologies (IT) make use, participate, integrate and share
information, for their own benefit and therefore for the benefit of everyone,
creating with that a common vision on the world of agricultural business. Juan
Ángel de la Fuente, Notary from Agronegocios del Plata, my translation50
The “new culture” is the opposition to a culture that, typical of the past, is
logically condemned to disappear: “the culture in Uruguay is in the cities and
Montevideo, so the people from the countryside that have serious restrictions to a
academic and cultural education could not follow the process.” This production of
meaning is very similar to others I discussed before, communicating an image of
“Uruguay as a conservative culture that fears the development of modernity.”
To put the issue in terms of Herbert Marcuse (1989), the “new culture” theme
permits to naturalize the organization of reality by technology as the most
fundamental human experience. Similarly to what I showed regarding the responses
of businessmen and other private sectors to the critiques on the use of GMO’s51, the
tendency is to “repress any values or ideas that are not in conformity with the
dominant rationality” (Marcusse, 19889) as illegitimate expressions52. The authority
of professional voices plays a key role in the production of these symbolic systems,
representing the legitimate view of the world (remember also when SERAGRO called
the “experts” to resolve a similar problem before).
This symbolic production seeks to conceal the possibility of criticizing and
transcending its contemporary society (Marcuse, 1989). In terms of Pierre Bourdieu,
the discourse on the “new agriculture” condemns the possibility of a critique to the
50
“No quedara sobre la tierra ni el más fuerte no el más inteligente, sino el que major se adapte”
http://www.adp.com.uy/notaext.asp?ID=2
51
Another example of this can be found under Mulet, J.M “Una mirada diferente: lo ecológico no es
más sano ni más bueno para el medio ambiente”:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/salud/20110720/54185838652/j-m-mulet-lo-ecologico-no-es-mas-sanoni-mas-bueno-para-el-medio-ambiente.html
52
An example of this type of reaction in a “everyday” situation can be observed on the same radio
session one listener sent some kind of impromptu commentary, arguing that the expansion of
agriculture was a phenomenon “against nature that soon or later one needs to pay” and the commentary
of one of the habitual members of the program -Rodolfo Irigoyen- was: I never share fundamentalist
answers and I do not share this. You need to see what the specialist says on this topic, because
intensive agriculture, like any human activity can be very well done or badly done. La Tertulia
Agropecuaria, 28 of April, 2007, my translation.
53 dominant doxa -the space of everything that is not possible to be questioned. What
cannot be disputed here is that soybean agriculture is a development for the society
and that the cause for economic underdevelopment is the cultural essence in the
geographical and ideological deepness of Uruguay: the conservativeness and
fearfulness in relation to technological innovation and capitalist modernization.
In the discourse of the “new agriculture” the “cultural change” is an ongoing
project where human resources adapt to changes in technology (for instance,
management of information, manipulation of new machineries); that is, “to the use of
the tools that modernity has put to its disposition.” In this sense, Guigou and Vila
state that there is a “need of training” to make the change possible. Uruguay needs to
be trained to fully incorporate the model of the “gerenciadores agricolas” as the
dominant model in agriculture, while workers need also to be trained in the
manipulation of the new technologies. In other words, the long-lasting character of
the “expansion of agriculture” is considered an issue to be produced: the business
sector and the state institutions need to “prepare the people” to make the phenomenon
long lasting.
There is where the issue of soil erosion is connected to the “cultural problem”
(perhaps because of it conservative dimension) of not having the capacity of seeing
that the expansion of the agriculture is a permanent phenomenon. To solve this
problem, argue the “new agriculture” discourse, is to prepare the human resources for
understanding that a permanent change has occurred and that taking care of the soils
is essential. There is a symbolic issue in play in the aim of “training people to take
care of the environment”: the social recognition of the impossibility of questioning a
development in agriculture and society and that “the problem” is anchored in
Uruguay’s culture, conservative and fearful to changes.
The environmental risks that are being denunciated are based on the
analysis of the things from an old-mind-structure. Uruguay has the technological
tools necessary to prevent these risks, the only condition is that these
technologies need to be adapted to the economic interests, and all the national
research shows that this is the case…53
53 Rodolfo
Irigoyen, La tertulia Agropecuaria, September, 2009 54 To resume, the discursive practice that subsumes “technological and social
innovation” themes under “cultural change” gives the possibility to articulate the
“environmental impact” theme in a new way. The solution to the “environmental
impacts” is not only to be achieved with the application of technologies as seen in the
first case but as a change in culture (however technology is part of the category).
Even though the official statistics show that the agricultural managers are those
producers who have the major percentage of lands under continuous agriculture (90
percent) and less percentage with rotations (7 percent) (Arbeletche, 2008), the
discourse on the “new agriculture” displaces the cause of soil erosion from the
characteristics of agriculture. Instead, the problem is associated with a culture: the
opposed figure of scientific reason and technological development. Nevertheless, this
type of discursive misrecognition of the environmental problem will require a more
rational formulation to have any larger symbolic implication.
4.2.5) The discursive separation of “environmental impact” from its social
conditions of production
Clearly, by 2007 the concerns around soybean agriculture had sprung in
Uruguay’s media. In specific, newspapers dedicated some space to the impacts on
other producers. For example, El Observador informs the problems of peanut
producers to find lands after the expansion of soy and forestation54, the environmental
consequences like soil erosion55 and the movement of the livestock sector to more
peripheral lands56. One emerging characteristic of these articles is the separation of
any interconnectedness between social and environmental aspects.
For example, the newspaper dedicates an article to inform on the reports from
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)57. In specific, it
informs on FAO’s concern on the substitution of some land use practices by intensive
monoculture. FAO’s perspective is to analyze soybean agriculture as a regional
phenomenon recognizing a global tendency to the concentration of lands and the
54
El Observador, 6 of July, 2007
El Observador, 15 of July, 2007
56
El Observador, 7 Dicembert, 2007
57
El Observador, 23 of February, 2007. 55
55 decrease of what FAO calls “agricultura de subsistencia”. One important consequence
of the decrease of such land use practice is the extended use of agrochemicals in
soybean agriculture that contaminate these small-scale productions. FAO also states
that small scale producers are induced to leave their lands, selling or renting them, as
they can not compete with larger producers, this have effects on rural employment
and wealth distribution. FAO considers that the especial limits in natural resources
and the competitiveness of smaller farmers are the key questions for Uruguay. FAO
sharply indicates that the problems of “sustainable production”, especially the erosion
of soil, are resolved by intensive agricultural systems through “direct planting” and
the rotation with cereals (FAO, 2006:117). In this manner, FAO argue that the
“sustainability of the production” in the case of Uruguay is a topic emerging once that
traditional producers –whom practiced mixed system- can no longer compete with
larger farmers. For FAO, the question is that producers with small land extensions
face scale problems to develop this type of agriculture. On the contrary, El
Observador mentions the issue of soil erosion and other questions (biodiversity loss,
disease vulnerability) but forgets to mention the close relation of socio-economic
aspects to those environmental effects.
Similarly, on its report on a seminar organized by Cooperativas Agrarias
Federadas (CAF, Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives) and the Ministerio de
Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca (MGAP, Ministry of Agriculture, and Fishing) the
newspaper pays much attention to the structural and cultural aspects of the
modernization in agriculture. Yet it restricts its information on the environmental
concerns to some miscellaneous information, without informing on the discourses of
Ricardo Diaz’ (National Research Institute of Agriculture, INIA) and Oswaldo Ernst
(Department of Agriculture, University of the Republic) during the seminar58. In
short, the newspaper’s clearly separates the information on the structural socioeconomic transformations from the problem of soil erosion and other environmental
questions. This vision situates the environmental question as externalities of a new
agricultural context.
58
Oswaldo Ernst explained the erosive impacts of different types of rotations, suggesting as the best
alternative the combination of agriculture with pastures and “no-tillange framing”. Ricardo Diaz
explained, similarly, how the reduction of rotations affect negatively carbon and nitrogen levels and the
threat that climate change and the rising in the intensity of rains and fuels’ price for that type of model.
56 Those kinds of discursive elisions are common in other media spaces that
imply the interaction of actors. For example, in “La tertulia agropecuaria”, Oswaldo
Ernst discussed the positives and negatives aspects of the expansion of soybean
agriculture59. He and some producers seemed to agree on the positive aspects:
generation of jobs, incorporation of technologies and economic growth in other
economic sectors connected to the intensification in soybean agriculture.
On the negative aspects, Ernst mentioned the issue of soil. According to him,
the commodification of soil makes possible that there are producers without land
(referring to the type of farmers that rent land and services to produce soybeans) and
“landlords” that can therefore have agriculture on their lands and earn from the
activity. The “land” is what in Ernst’s vision makes possible the actual agricultural
context. Brightly, Ernst considers that “soil erosion” will be the center of the
agricultural question, calling the attention of the actors of this agricultural process
about the legitimacy of the topic60. Ernst limits his commentaries to stress on the
importance of taking care of the soil as a “responsibility between the producer and the
renter of the land”. He addresses not only the producers but also the government.
According to Ernst, this problem becomes a “social responsibility” when these actors
do not take care of the resource, therefore requiring the State’s action to “keep all the
positive that this phenomenon has for twenty years”61. The strategy of Ernst,
formulating the problem in these terms (soil= fabric= social responsibility) presents a
useful discursive characteristic that might impregnate on the soybean chain actors62.
Following the line drafted by Ernst, Roberto Benia, vice-president of CAF
added:
Regulating the activity is not recommendable, I don’t believe that regulating is
the adequate term, we need to have conscience that this is (ed. the soil) a social
good, every actor, including the technicians, know exactly how far they can
impact on a situation where the economic usually gets more attention” La
Tertulia, 18 May, 2008, my translation
Situating the land resources as a “social good” -something that belongs to
59
La tertulia agropecuaria 18 of May, 2008.
Ernst repeat the strategy for example at the XII “Jornadas of Technical actualization” at ERRO when
he referred to the central capital of the agriculture -the land- as a “fabric”
61
El Observador, 18 of May, 2008. This vision is shared by other members of the agronomic
profession: see for example interview with Hoffman (Deutsch and Baraibar, 2007)
62
See, for instance, the presentation of the member of ERRO in Foco Soja 2010.
60
57 everyone- or a “social responsibility” -something that concerns everyone- the actors
present the problem of soil erosion as a disinterested awareness. In other words, the
soil erosion problem is separated from any specific and individual material interest.
Roberto Benia address here also the producers, calling them “to have conscience” and
avoiding state regulations. In other words, the definition of soil erosion as a social
concern masks the specific social and economic bases of an environmental problem.
This type of discursive practice that formulates soil erosion as disinterested
problem, opened a space to associate “sustainability” with the “technological” theme.
In the view of El Observador and businessmen is possible to conserve the
environment and implanting biotechnologies in agriculture. This is usually
communicated by stressing the community of business and interests of Uruguayans
and Argentines in soybean agriculture: Uruguayans have the soil and “love” taking
care of the environment by rotating crops (corn-soy), while Argentine corporations
invest in soybean agriculture and bring the latest technologies.63 This is a curious
reversal of the initial soybean businessmen’s commentaries on how underdeveloped,
anachronic and ideologically influenced Uruguayans are. In the narrative of soybean
agriculture, the usual more conservative approach of Uruguayans is finally resignified as “love” when it can be associated with the actual investments done by
transnational corporations and the possibility of resolving the soil erosion question by
technological development. This shows how the discourse on the “new agriculture”
promote diverse images of Uruguay -from a fearful culture to one with emotional
attachments- looking for a legitimatization of the processes started in Uruguay by
2003.
63
See for instance: “Tenacity and love are the key for a sustainable Agriculture”, El Observador, 6
November, 2009.
58 4.3) Meetings on soybean agriculture: a PD towards the institutionalization of
NRM
I explored several soybean industry meetings’ documentation between 2003 and
2010, recognizing topics and participating actors (see Appendix 8.2 and 8.3). The
revision of these meetings and their topics shows that in a chronological sense the
emergence of themes as “sustainability” is not directly the same as in the material I
analyzed in the last section. But the development of topics across the years shows also
the rising importance of environmental aspects. The meetings are usually coorganized by the private sector and the research institutions. The presence of members
of different Departments of the MGAP and academics is extensive, especially on
those meetings organized by the producers’ organizations. I select some
representative cases as spaces to exemplify the circulation of actors and discourses.
Through this circulation of discourses and actors a PD is partially institutionalized.
4.3.1) The relationship MGAP, INIA, CAF and MTO
A significant meeting called “Sustainability of the agricultural intensification in
Uruguay” organized by INIA, with presence of members of the Oficina de
Programación Y Política Agropecuaria (Department of Planning and Agricultural
Policy, OPYPA) within the MGAP and Scientifics from INIA, had already dealt in
2004 with the issue of sustainability. This shows the importance of these groups of
actors in the interpretation of the changes in agriculture; the interaction of them with
producers will conform a PD (see Appendix 8.4 for a description of the meeting).
The environmental issues are not a central topic of the meetings until the CAF,
MGAP and the Proyecto de Produccion Responsible (Project in Responsible
Production, PPR), organized64 the event “Agricultura, Antes, Ahora… y Después”
(Agriculture, Before, Today… and then?) to discuss the social and environmental
impacts of the recent development in agriculture.
64
The Congress was in principle an initiative coming from Alfredo Bruno, head of the PPR that works
with small producers that many times are affected by the use of agrochemicals.
59 After that meeting in Las Canas a new group was formed between CAF (see
Appendix 8.5 for an image of the relevance of this sector), Asociación Rural de
Uruguay (Rural Association of Uruguay), Asociación Uruguaya de Siembra Directa
(Uruguayan Association of Direct Planting), Federación Rural (Rural Federation),
Comisión Nacional de Fomento Rural (National Committee of Rural Promotion) and
the MTO: “Agricultura Sustentable” (Sustainable Agriculture). The Group pressured
the MGAP on July 15th 2008 to elaborate a “Manual of good practices,” in the search
of “achieving a correct agricultural development, but not stopping it.”65 The
organizations manifested their interest on the environmental impacts to the MGAP and
at the same time they promoted the terms in which problems might be interpreted and
the solutions taken.
4.3.2) Some examples of company’s meetings
The tendency of basing the solution of the problem of soil erosion on technological
development is an emergent characteristic of the industry after 2007 (see table 1 on
Appendix 8.2). In symbolic terms, it makes possible to maintain the doxa of the
symbolic system (market demands, modernization/ technological development) and
seeks to appropriate the legitimacy of the interpretation of an issue that can question
soybean agriculture: the environmental impacts. This appropriation is seen in
“slogans” like: “Towards an intelligent agriculture: is it possible a sustainable
growth?” (Union Rural, 2009) or, “Producing more food reducing the environmental
impact” (MTO, 2010).
Indicators of how the question of environmental impacts of soybean agriculture
emerges are the Conferences organized by the company Barraca Erro. The main topic
of these meetings is always biotechnologies66. From 2005 (the first year I had access
to the information about these meetings) to 2008 there were no event that paid
attention to the problem of natural resources, which on the contrary gained some place
in the structure and name of the meetings thereafter. At the same time, in 2008 also the
first researchers from Uruguay participate in the meeting. These researchers -Oswaldo
65
http://www.caf.org.uy/Sustentabilidad-agricola-grupo-de
is one of the largest exporters of soybeans in Uruguay and is associated with the Argentine
corporation Don Mario S.A for the production of seeds. 66 ERRO
60 Ernst and Esteban Hoffman from FAGRO- organized the section of natural resources,
discussing the critical issue of the use of the soil67. What this fact inform is that there
is an interest from the companies to include the topic of sustainability and making use
of the most prestigious agronomic researchers in the country.
The introduction of a discourse on environmental issues and the participation
of professionals is observed in “Porteras Abiertas” (Open gates) (see Appendix 8.6 for
a description of these meetings) In similar ways to what is observed in ERRO “XII
Jornadas” (2008), El Tejar introduces the topic of the environment in “Porteras
Abiertas” in the event of 2010: “Committed with the earth.” In this event,
environmental and natural resources issues have some place for the first time. The
discussion on the soil problem was headed by Mariana Hill, Director of the RENARE,
who presented the project initiated by the Department of the MGAP that year; the
discussion on water issues was responsibility of Silvana Alcoz from Dirección
Nacional de Recursos Acuáticos (National Department of Water Resources,
DINARA), and the discussion over carbon emission control by the company
CarbonSur.
Complementarily, the technical workshops were dedicated to rotations
practices that could have a positive impact on soil conditions but also help to the
combination of different agricultural productions. For example, the first workshop
suggested how the complementation of crop rotation with livestock farming could be a
productive formula. The second workshop was based on the problem of soil erosion
and showed how the use of different winter crops affects the control of soils. This
workshop shows also how extended is the idea within diverse actors of the soybean
chain that the solution of soil erosion is a technological issue and, moreover, that in
the terms of its solution is implied the expansion of profits. Illustrating this tacit
agreement between the companies, El Tejar presents an extreme version of the slogans
that appropriate the environmental issues: “the business of sustainability”.
4.3.3) Themes and actors in the conformation of a PD
67 Their
presentations are similar to what they have been developing on other instances before. See for example CAF meeting in Las Canas 2007. 61 In synthesis, after 2007 there is an expansion of interest in the problem of
“natural resources”, but especially on the use and erosion of the soils. The question of
“environmental impacts” is promoted publically focusing progressively on “soil
erosion”. The circulation of specialist between diverse meetings in Uruguay is
extensive and legitimizes the good intentions of this sector of the economy in front the
general public. Moreover, thorough the participation of diverse professionals,
producers and governmental representatives, a PD on environmental issues is
established. For example, the professional interest that different actors in the scientific
community have in defining the problem of natural resources is based on the
legitimate position they take as professionals. In the meetings, the actors make use of
their professional capital, which implies a way of classifying the world, and contribute
to the recognition of “soil erosion” as a problem.
Paraphrasing Remi Lenoir (1993) the “soil erosion problem” is not only the
consequence of a bad performance in agriculture, but a real “social work” with two
stages: recognition and legitimatization of the problem as such (Lenoir, 1993: 80). In
the first stage, groups of actors interested in defining soybean agriculture issues with
the porpoise of acting upon it, make soil erosion a singular situation that disserves
attention (see section 5.1). During the second stage, a work of enunciation and public
formulations situate the problem within the field of “social problems”: the industry
meetings I presented so far show that actors participate in events and help to legitimize
the attention of certain problems as soil erosion. The institutionalization of the soil
erosion problem by the RENARE is where that legitimatization is more properly
realized.
62 4.4) Natural resource management in Uruguay after the expansion of soybean
agriculture: the RENARE and the institutionalization of the problem of soil
erosion
To study a Country’s NRM based on one single Program is inevitably a reductionism.
This is even more the case when one is confronted not only to a large institutional
setting, but also to one where different institutions have superposed functions. A
study from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) makes
a great description of Uruguay’s institutional complexity, its superimposition of
functions and gaps in environmental policies within agriculture (Moreira and Bianco,
2005) This study from IICA indicates the necessity in Uruguay to re-adapt its NRMP
to the later changes in agriculture (industrial forestation, livestock and crop
agriculture intensification)
This type of adaptation of NRMP to that new context is something yet to be produced
and partial attempts to manage the natural resources are still in place. The case of the
Program developed from the RENARE -Plan de Uso y Manejo de los Suelos (Soils
Use and Management Plan)- is one case of partial management and the one that is
more publically related to the development of intensive crop agriculture.
4.4.1) The RENARE and its relationship with the PD
The Program developed from the RENARE institutionalizes the problem of soil
erosion and promotes the adaptation of the producers to the guidelines and norms for
the use of that fundamental resource. The División de Suelos y Aguas (Soils and
Waters Department) assumes the representation of the political will to control the
erosion of the soils and offers a structure to organize the PD of soil erosion as a
technological and disinterested problem.
During the meeting in Las Canas in 2007, Carlos Victora from RENARE presented a
pyramidal perspective of social responsibility regarding the degradation and the care
of the soils between physicals conditions (soils natural structure) and external
economic conditions (soybean market). On its base there is the “social will” and the
63 role of the media; the second level is constituted by the “political will” to influence
through education and information on science and technology, assigning research
resources and legislating on the matter. Lastly Victora considered the “responsibility
of the producers” that decide, from the technological solutions offered, how they
develop their activities and impact on the degradation and maintenance of the soils.68
Victora defines the social distribution of responsibilities for the management soil
erosion, presented in a way that identify the actors (media, government, scientists,
institutions of education) and functions (communication, education and information,
assignment of resources and legislation) adapted to the model that respect the private
sphere69(producers decision).
The role of knowledge, technological development and specially the figure of
the “technicians”70 as the link between the state and the private sector is similar to the
view of Roberto Benia (CAF) I discussed before. In general, the idea presented by the
RENARE conforms to the definition of soil erosion as a disinterested problem within
the PD and also institutionalize the agreement within the sector on the importance and
centrality of soil erosion as main environmental issue. It also defines its solution as the
adequate use of available technologies. Moreover, the RENARE identify the soil
erosion as a limitation for the productivity of the activity and as a condition for the
expansion of agriculture to new lands.71
4.4.2) The RENARE and the reorganization cycle in NRMP
The Program developed from the RENARE seeks the reorganization of the resources
available in Uruguay for the management of the soils. To develop a new management
of the soils the RENARE is compelled to promote, in first place, a re-definition of
national laws regarding the use of the soils and, in second place, the re-articulation of
institutions. This was expressed very well by one of its members in 2007:
“I think that we are living a very special circumstances. (…) The thing is that
historically Uruguay has been insufficient in the management of the resources,
68
RENARE, Carlos Victora, Las Canas, Uruguay, 2007
Understood here as the no-intervention of the state on private activities.
70
The agronomist is usually defined as a “technician” in Uruguay.
71
See Hector Gonzalez Idiarte, Campana de uso y manejo responsible y sostenible del suelo, MGAPRENARE. No date. Online resource.
69
64 which has been an unbalanced management that focused on the short periods
rather than on the sustainability of the resources. (…) Uruguay has never had
State policies in this regard. By this, I mean that it has responded to internal or
external economic situations, but has never defined policies for large periods
(…) We do not have State policies regarding the basic resources that conform the
agriculture. We have laws (…) that are not bad… (…) They respond to market
situations, to the way the companies act, to the problem we have with small
producers (…) they fluctuate in response to the situation. From the RENARE,
we are suggesting for the next year, for one side the discussion of the Soils Law
and its application (…) We understand that the MGAP should integrate with
other institutions as the Faculty, the INIA, at least to impact on areas of the
country where we could integrate all the instruments we have to show that with
articulation and integration the use of the soils can be integrated with its
sustainability in the long run” Hector Gonzalez, IICA 2007, Matilda Bairaibar
transcription, my translation.
The MGAP promoted the revision of the Law 15.239 on Conservation of Soils and
Superficial Waters, including the renters of lands as co-responsible in the conservation
of the resource and the reinforcement of sanction mechanisms. On the other hand,
promoted the modification of the regulation decree 333/04 of the 16th of September of
2004, promoting the inclusion of a list of not acceptable uses of the lands and
determining the sanction of the producers once soil erosion has been detected on their
lands. It also articulates the Law 18.564 from the 11th of September of 2009 on the
Conservation, use and adequate management of soils and waters.
The Program also promotes the utilization of digital tools classificatory of the lands
according to their soil composition72 and tools to calculate the erosion of the soils
according to their composition73 (idem)
On another level, the RENARE bases its plan on the articulation with other institutions
with the capacity to actualize and deepen the knowledge on the conservationist use of
the soils (idem) This reorganization of the human resources, argue the RENARE, will
facilitate the exploitation of the resource and its conservation beneficiating the
producers and the country.
72
73
Indice CONEAT: http://www.prenader.gub.uy/coneat/viewer.htm?Title=CONEAT%20Digital
Erosion 5.9.1: http://www.fagro.edu.uy/~manejo/ 65 4.5) Soybean agriculture and scientific research’s agenda: the production of
ecological knowledge
Characterized since its foundation as an agricultural economy, Uruguay has
developed a strong institutionalization of the activity (Pinero, no date). Scientific
organizations, for example the INIA and the FAGRO, had played a key role within
that framework, combining scientific research with the principal economic activity in
the country.
In Uruguay, there is a well-developed tradition of knowledge evaluating
environmental impacts and advising diverse agricultural practices. Researchers had
been working together with the producers and developed a system that sustained soil
life in an agriculture-fodder no-till system (agricultura-pasturas sin laboreo). In terms
of Berkes and Folke (Gunderson, 2001), these institutions have played a key role for
resource management as they provide the linkage between the ecosystem and
management practice: “ecological knowledge and understanding” (2001: 114)
The introduction of a technology as “direct planting” within a model that included
the rotations with pastures would theoretically bring soil erosion to the lowest
historical levels (interview with Hoffman 2007, Prechac, Ernst, Siri-Prieto and Terra,
2004) But the model of rotations with pastures, hegemonic model since 1970 (Durán
and García Préchac, 2007; Prechac, Ernst, Siri-Prieto and Terra, 2004), lost its
presence progressively after 2002. That model comprehended a specific socioeconomic structure (Arbeletche 2008, Pinero, no date) where the problem of soil
erosion was resolved in that specific way.
Today soil erosion appears within a new agricultural context (see 4.1). This
situation has transformed soil erosion in a “new old problem”, as Oswaldo Ernst liked
to call it in many occasions74. On the last section, I showed how these professionals
appear repetitively on many “industry meetings” representing the environmental
conscience of them, talking about something they have known and worked very well
74
See La Tertulia Agropecuaria, 28 of April, 2007. Also, for example, Fernando García, Dean of
Faculty of Agronomy, also stated that historically the key for the conservation of soils had been the
rotation between crops and pastures, but that when that system is not longer hegemonic Uruguay is in
problems again. Fernando García at ICCA 2007, Lisa and Matilda December 2007. 66 on since many years. What now has changed for them is the context to apply their
knowledge and re-define the solutions to the “old problem”. In this manner, their
social role as specialists might also be revitalized.
4.5.1) The reorganization of agriculture and scientific knowledge
Given the development of agriculture of the last decade in Uruguay, the activity
from scientific institutions clearly shows its political character as researchers take
participation in the interpretation of that phenomenon, but also as they produce
ecological knowledge (2001). In the new agricultural context the professionals fulfill
two social functions. In first place, while they make use of that accumulated
knowledge, they contribute in the definition of the PD as I analyzed before (see also
appendix 8.7). In second place, they produce more knowledge on natural resources
now in the terms of the new PD. Their role as producers of the linkage between the
ecological and the social systems through knowledge (2001) has a power implication
since they might enable certain exploitation of natural resources, helping some actors
to “secure ecological services” (2001: 227).
Given the importance of knowledge in the linking between management
institutions and the ecosystem (2001), one sensible indicator to answer to the question
on the role of NRMP within the processes that are leading to an alternative state in
Uruguay’s agriculture is to understand if that linkage has been altered. Analyzing how
the scientific agenda adapts to NRMP ands seeks to resolve the problem, what new
knowledge on the ecosystem is produced, gives insights on the role that NRMP is
called to play during the RS. When scientific organizations as the INIA produce
knowledge about the ecosystem based on certain problem, in this case “soil erosion as
technological and disinterested problem”, they tend to offer practical solutions to the
problem. These “solutions” to the problem respond necessarily to the new conditions
of exploitation of the nature in a new SES.
I presented before the strategic role of “precision agriculture” for the management
of the natural resources in the new agricultural context and how it could be associated
with the correct use of the environment (see 4.2.5). Jorge Sawchick from the INIA
showed adherence to this plan and the project of adapting the human resources to it.
67 These manifestations in relation to the role of agronomic science in the new context
are repeated on many occasions. For examaple, on a session of La Tertulia
Agropecuaria75, Carlos Bautes and agronomic Consultant ex researcher at INIA La
Estanzuela, identified in the “new old problem” of the erosion of the soils as “the
opportunity” of the new context for the researchers to help to maintain the system at
the “crest of the wave” and prevent bad yields76. Similarly, Enrique Fernandez
prioritized the topic of sustainability of the natural resources in relation to the
improvement in the efficiency of the productive process. This shows an agreement
with the idea of the technological innovation to resolve environmental issues and rise
profits77.
On another occasion78, Sergio Ceretta from the INIA La Estanzuela identified the
principal areas of the institution where “to develop alternatives and more diversified
systems”: the “Program on Rain-fed Crop Production” and the “Program on
production and environmental sustainability”.
The Program on Rain-fed Crops has strong relationships with the MTO (a space
where the private and corporate sector share with the public research institutions the
interest on research problems, see appendix 8.8). This Program attend the problem of
sustainability on very particular ways; in general, it seeks “to develop technological
alternatives, that make possible to continue rising crop yields, stressing the
environmental, economic and social sustainability”79. Between the main specific
objectives there are 1) to integrate biotechnologies with traditional plant breeding to
accelerate the development of cultivars with good adaptation, high yielding capacity,
75
See La Tertulia Agropecuaria, La investigación aplicada al agro en Uruguay: situacion, desafíos y
prioridades, 30.10.2007
76
“Today we are at the crest of the wave but the history has been repeated on many occasions during
the century, because of the same causes, for productive problems, for biological problems, the erosion
of the soils head us to bad yields, even though prices stay the same. This is way it is an extraordinary
opportunity, even for the research, for the technicians and for the new generation that begging to
conduce the research processes, what is an aggregated effect of the big opportunities that this context
have.” Carlos Bautes, agronomic consultant ex researcher at INIA La Estanzuela.
77 One (ed. challenge for research) is the sustainability of the natural resources, a topic that the INIA
and other public organisms cannot avoid, it will always be on the research agenda. Secondly, associated
with this, the changes in the processes that improve the efficiency of the productive process or,
sometimes, to associate with people that can create new products that might imply a new development.
And third, the quality associated to production, to create quality processes to attend specific market
niches…” Enrique Fernandez, Regional Director of INIA La Estanzuela since 2006. 78 Ceretta in ICCA 2007, Matilda Baraibar’s Transcription 79 http://www.inia.org.uy/online/site/335402I1.php#seccion2672 68 disease resistance and high industrial and nutritional quality and 2) deepen the
knowledge
of
crop
response
to
relevant
abiotic
stresses
in
different
growing environments in order to generate technologies that make a more efficient and
responsible use of inputs and natural resources80.
This knowledge production is complementary to the “ambient agriculture” in the
way that it explains how specific crops, technology and diverse inputs can adapt to the
variability of the soils. This framework bases “the diversification in the agricultural
systems” on the tendency to systematize the knowledge on the natural resources,
specially the soils, on the base of an agricultural model where the experience from
previous farmers is not a factor of production anymore.
This situation in Uruguay suggests that relations of power in a society should be
included to understand why determined feedbacks and not others from the ecosystem
are selected and how the “learned experience” of a society (Gunderson, 2001) is
symbolically processed within power relations. In Uruguay, the linkage between the
social and the ecological system -ecological knowledge- might be approaching an
important shift where the attention to certain feedbacks from the environment, or more
precisely the selection of them, are not only related to more than 50 years of
agriculture and environmental experience rather than on the social imposition of
problems in accordance to determined exploitation of nature. In this framework, the
role of the professionals –as carrier of a very specific capital that synthesize that
history- is revalued in detriment of farmers’ direct experience.
80 http://www.inia.org.uy/online/site/335402I1.php#seccion2672 69 5) Recapitulation of results
1) Why did soil erosion become one of the most promoted environmental impacts
addressed by a governmental institution in Uruguay?
A first step to answer this question is to understand in what degree the
achievement of a new stable state - a new balance of processes between the SES
variables- is still an ongoing process in Uruguay’s SES. The “agricultural managers”
that develop crop-agriculture are a new attractor and the system has already
experienced a rapid growth phase (see sections 4.1.3) with a large concentration of
resources (principally lands) controlled by the AM (see section 4.1.4). Even though
this process of accumulation is part of an early concentration phase, the social process
I studied showed that the limits (biophysical and socials) to this economic
concentration are being pushed forward as the reorganization phase is still taking
place (see 4.1.4)
The emergence of soil erosion as the centre of the environmental question has to
be understood as a consequence of the relationships of power between the members of
the SES that is being reorganized, that 1) still have economic interests in
correspondence to it (producers), 2) have a history of production of knowledge about
it (scientists), 3) have political relationships with the producers (politicians), and a
group of new “specialists” that force the reorganization of the SES. The soil erosion
problem is an outcome of the symbolic struggle between actors regarding the changes
in the SES. This problem makes possible to conform a PD between the actors
endowed to talk about it. It has been also progressively institutionalized in a NRMP.
In symbolic terms, the acknowledgement of soil erosion as a technological and
disinterested problem may legitimize a further reorganization of resources in
concordance to the new dynamics of economic reproduction and accumulation within
the SES, driven and controlled by the agricultural managers.
At a first quick approach, there seems not to be any institutional change in
Uruguay. However, some indicators suggest the beginning of a new NRM (see figure
6). Influenced by the discursive struggle between actors upon the character of the
70 agricultural changes, NRM is facing a shift that today is observable in a qualitative
level:
1) a reorganization cycle of NRM at its institutional level and
2) new scientific research topics.
The reorganization of NRMP pushed forward by the RENARE, as a set of rules
and guidelines for natural resource use in agriculture, legitimize a further
reorganization of human resources: new knowledge to sustain the expansion of
soybean agriculture.
The new research problems are in my view connected to the new conditions of
reproduction of the SES. For instance: the systematization of soil use and agriculture
by ambient or by the crop response to relevant abiotic stresses in different
growing environments in order to produce technologies would exploit the natural
resources more efficiently. In this sense, a RS is also observable in NRM: the linkage
to the ecological system is not based merely on the EK produced over more than 50
years of Uruguayan agriculture, but on the power relationships specific to the SES’s
regime shift.
Figure 6: RS in the linkage between ecosystem and the management institution. The
graphic situates (blue area) the beginning of a RS in NRM at the center of the interactions
between PD, EK&U and NRMP. The reorganization cycle in NRMP and (potential) changes
71 in EK&U are a consequence of the symbolic power relationships that shape the PD and not
the EK&U elaborated over more than 50 years of agriculture.
In synthesis, the relation between NRMP and the RS explain the
institutionalization of soil erosion as main environmental problem. This relation
implies two aspects:
1) NRMP is the institutionalization of the symbolic relations of power during
SES’ RS and
2) the NRMP -as rules and guidelines in resource use in agriculture- promotes
the development of new EK&U, expanding the reorganization phase to
EK&U.
2) What is the role of the different actors in the definition of NRMP during the
expansion of soybean agriculture?
Through position-taking the actors produce a symbolic system regarding the changes
in the SES, in which soil erosion as a technological and neutral “scientific” problem
may emerge as a dominant theme to legitimate the new process of soybean
agriculture’s intensification. The roles can be identified according to the specific
social field (production, governmental, academic, professional) that the dominant
actors occupy.
3) What are the power relations among them?
The relations of power are observed in the struggle between actors that seek to
produce the legitimate discourse regarding the changes in agriculture and actors that
seek to resist those changes. The formation of a symbolic system on these changes is
observed through the complementation between actors’ discourses (producers,
academic, government) and the suppression of alternative discourses. The
relationships between these position-takings produced a symbolic system from where
72 the problem of soil erosion emerged with characteristics that contribute to a further
reorganization of the SES (see Figure 7).
The dynamics of the discussion shows that during position-taking some discursive
complementation were produced, especially between AM, soybean industry sectors
and the scientific community. The preoccupation from the AM for the linkages
between the social and natural resources is present from the first years of the
expansion of soybean agriculture. Then it is observable a promotion of a “new
agriculture” for the community as a discourse sustained on positive economic impacts
of soybean agriculture, the necessity to play a role in world’s food security and the
technological innovation.
An impasse in the development of the “new agriculture” discourse is marked by
the irruption of alternative voices (RAPAL-UY, organic producers, etc). These
highlight:
1) that the environmental impacts connected to the new technologies
(agrochemicals) have consequences on the economic activities of other
producers (e.g., bee-keepers, organic producers),
2) that agrochemicals negatively impact on the population health and
3) that the economic pressure on land prices constricted the possibilities of small
farmers.
The common reaction to those critiques, between AM and other sectors interested
in the development of soybean agriculture and associated technologies, was to
condemn them as blasphemies originated in cultural limitations to progress in
Uruguay. Technological innovation and market relationships were understood as
fundamental advances within society that took Uruguay out of its traditional
economic and cultural conservativeness.
In turn, the questioning of soybean agriculture gave place to the dominant actors’
reformulation of the “environmental impact” critique and rationalization of a
discourse upon the advantages of the “new agriculture”. This rationalization process
has two discursive moments. First, the recognition of the environmental issues within
the “new agriculture” discourse, through which dominant actors performed two
discursive operations:
73 1) They promoted new technologies as a resource that works for the conservation
of the environment and,
2) They argued that environmental problems were originated in cultural
limitations to the economic progress of Uruguay.
Second, dominant actors discursively separated the environmental impacts from
the economic conditions of their production. This discursive separation was achieved
by:
1)
defining environmental problems as externalities and,
2)
defining soil erosion as a problem that concerns everyone.
In short, my argument is that the emergence of soil erosion as a technological
and neutral social problem may mask the central economic interests within the SES’
reorganization phase. Moreover, the PD around the soil erosion problem promotes its
social recognition, legitimization and a later reorganization of the NRMP.
74 Figure 7: The symbolic system within Uruguay’s agricultural RS. The graphic shows the
principal opinions regarding the changes in agriculture in Uruguay between 2000 and 2010.
The field of opinion was constituted once the critiques to the changes in agriculture opened
the possibility for questioning the field of the unquestionable. In turn, the dominant actors
defended the technological organization of life and presented the new market relationships as
“basic human experience”, at the same time denouncing over the “conservativeness” of
Uruguayans and their rejection of progress. In short, the agricultural orthodoxy aimed to
restore the “primal state of innocence of the doxa” (Bourdieu, 1994) by rejecting the critiques
on soybean agriculture as blasphemies and rationalizing the discourse on the changes in
agriculture.
75 6) Conclusion
The study showed how the conformation of a PD around the issue of soil erosion
as technological and disinterested problem legitimized its institutionalization into a
NRMP. In this sense, the key issue of the NRMP developed from the RENARE was
the result of the symbolic struggles by members of a SES during its RS. On the other
hand, the study highlighted how this NRMP promotes the development of new
ecological knowledge extending the reorganization phase of the SES. This situation
demonstrates that power relations and NRMP can play a key role in the
reorganization of a SES.
Having in mind Berkes and Folke (1998) evaluation of “adaptive management” as
the capacity of an institution to “respond” to ecosystem feedbacks, what this situation
in Uruguay suggests is that relations of power in society should be included to
understand why determined feedbacks and not others from the ecosystem are selected
and how the ecological experience of a society can be symbolically processed within
power relations.
Bourdieu’s theoretical framework enables to situate NRMP within the dynamics of
a CAS. Usually, NRM is understood as a type of practice in society that is somewhat
above the dynamics of the system it pretends to manage. Even though some authors
(e.g Walker and Salt, 2006) consider that (modern) NRM normally concentrates on
determined CAS cycles phases –the exploitation and conservation phase with an
emphasis on effectiveness of the system- they have not given much attention to how
NRM is intertwined to a SES dynamics. My idea is that the relationships of NRM
with the SES dynamics (situating power relation within these dynamics) could explain
why NRM has focused on determined ecosystem cycles. Arguing that NRM can make
use of the scientific analysis of a SES dynamics, and that power relations are found in
the agreement or disagreement between actors on what a desirable state for an
ecosystem is or, that power relations influence the “adaptive capacity” of a SES to its
changes, can be a positivist illusion that situates NRM and human action above the
reality of its object.
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80 8) Appendix
8.1) Modified Organisms in Agriculture
The question of trangenics is a heated discussion revived every time the Comité
Nacional Coordinador (National Coordinating Committee) for the Marco Nacional de
Bioseguridad (National Frame for Biosecurity, MNS) meets. In this space is where
the discussion over the regulation of the introduction of GMO’s took place at the
beginning of the expansion of soybean agriculture. The MNS is a project in the frame
of the United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP) “Desarrollo de Marcos
Nacionales de Bioseguridad” (Development of Nationals Frames of Biosecurity),
carried out in Uruguay by the Dirección Nacional de Medio Ambiente (National
Department of Environment, DINAMA) of the Ministerio de Vivienda, Ordenamiento
Territorial y Medio Ambiente (Ministery of Housing, Territorial Planning and
Environment, MVOTMA). The Comité Nacional Coordinador is conformed by a
diverse range of organizations of producers, businessmen, state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, universities and research agencies.81 The discussion on
GMO’s is centered on whether organic agriculture can coexist or not with GMO
based agriculture. Pro-GMO based agriculture actors sustain that the coexistence is
possible and desirable. On the contrary, organic producers organizations are skeptical
and consider that the coexistence in Uruguay was imposed de facto without any
previous discussion.
On August 2005 and for the new agricultural season beginning on 2007, this
organization recommended the moratorium of the introduction of transgenic seeds
and the fulfillment of the Article 1 of the Decree 249/00 – according to it,
“introduction, use and manipulation of transgenics can only be made after its
authorization” – in relation to events introduced in the country without consultation.82
On August 2007, the National Government decreed the moratorium of the
81
See: Propuesta de Marco Nacional de Bioseguridad para Uruguay, Informe Final, Proyecto
DINAMA-UNEP-FMAM, 2007
82
Idem
81 introduction of new events in the country. That year the MNS was discontinued and
also a new institutional framework was developed. In this new institutional structure
the “civil society” is absent regarding the evaluation and has only an ad-hoc presence
in the regulation of GMO in agriculture.
8.2) Meetings on soybean agriculture
Table 1: Meetings on soybean agriculture in Uruguay 2000-2010
Year
Name and type of
meeting
“Jornada Nacional de
Soja”
Organizers
Topics
Participants
INIA with INTA,
CALMER,
AUSID
Researchers from
INIA (only two)
and INTA(majority)
2004
Simposio
“Sustentabilidad de la
Intensificación Agricola
en el Uruguay”
INIA with
CALMER,
AUSID,
COPAGRAN and
Fac. Agronomía
2005
IX Jornada de
Actualización Técnica en
Soja 2005: “Para rendir
al máximo y estabilizar
resultados”
Políticas de Estado. El
agro en los tiempos que
vienen: “Revolución
Biotecnológica:
oportunidad o amenaza?”
ERRO
- Pest and disease
control
- Soy fertilization
and adaptation to
environment
-Productive structure, soils and
water
-Vegetable protection
-Economic sustainability and relation to livestock
farming
- Pest and disease
control
- Genectics
- Market analysis
IICA, Consultora
Seragro and El
País
- Biotechnology
X Jornada de
Actualización Técnica en
Soja 2006: “Hacia el
desafío de altos
rendimientos”
“Agricultura: Antes,
Ahora… y Después?”
ERRO
XI Jornada de
Actualización
XI
Jornada de Técnica en
Soja 2007: “Soja:
Actualización
Técnica en
Alimentación
& Energía,
Soja
2007: “Soja:
hacía dónde vamos?”
Alimentación
& Energía,
hacía dónde vamos?”
ERRO
ERRO
- Pest and disease
control
- Genetics
- Soil fertilization
- Market analysis
- Agricultural
changes
-Natural resource
question
-The producers
“vision”
- Market analysis
futureanalysis
-and
Market
perspectives
and
future
- Genetics
perspectives
- Genetics
- Wayne Perrot
from University
of Georgia
- Alberto Nieto
from Facultad de
Química
- Fabián
Capdeville,
Biotecnología
INIA
- Eduardo Trigo,
Consultant
- Members of
ERRO, INTA
and argentinean
consultors
2003
2005
2006
2007
2007
2007
CAF, MGAP and
PPP
-Researchers
from INIA
-Members from
OPYPA
Members of
ERRO, INTA
and Argentinean
consultors
- Researchers
- MGAP, PPP,
OPYPA and
RENARE.
- CAF and
producers.
- Members of
Novitas
-ERRO,
Members
of
S.A andNovitas
Don
ERRO,
Mario
S.A
S.A
and
Don
Mario S.A
2008/02
82 Taller Nacional
“Sustentabilidad de la
cadena productive de la
soja en Uruguay I la
region”
1er Encuentro Uruguayo
de Soja
Fundación Ecos
and Organizacion
de los Estados
Americanos
-Sustainability
MTO
XII Jornada de
Actualización Técnica en
Soja 2008. Agricultura:
Potenciadora de la
Cadena Agropecuaria.
Genética, Sustentabilidad
y Agroeconomía
1er Jornada Porteras
Abiertas. Tendiendo
Puentes
ERRO
-International
market
-Environmental
impact of soy in
Uruguay
-Social impact
-Production organization
- Genetics
- Intensification
and sustainability
- Agro-business
2009
XIII Jornada de
Actualización Técnica en
Soja 2009:
Intensificación
Agrícola…una realidad.
ERRO
2009
Ciclo de Conferencias de
50 anos Sociedad Rural
de Flores: "Hacia una
Agricultura Inteligente:
¿es posible un
crecimien-to
sustentable?"
Unión Rural de
Flores
2009
II Jornadas Porteras
abiertas: Liderando el
Desarrollo
El Tejar with Sociedad Rural de
Durazno, Liga del
Trabajo del Carmen, Intendencia
Municipal de Durazno
2008
2008
2008/11
El Tejar
-Sustainable Agriculture
-Entrepreneurs experience
- Biotechnologies
- Market perspectives
- Nutrient
management and
intensification
- Round Table on
Responsible Soy
Association
- Market analysis
- Analysis actual
situation
- Models for efficient agriculture
- Use of natural
resources after intensification
-Enterprising and
society
-Applied technology
- Alfredo Blum
- Ricardo
Cayssials
-Mariana
Letcher, ECOS
- Researchers
from INIA, FAGRO
-Members
MGAP
-Member of
CEPAL
- Members of
ERRO, Novitas
S.A, Don Mario
S.A and Aapresid
- Researcher
(Oswaldo Ernst)
Researchers from
INIA (Sachick)
and Agronomia
(Ernst)
- Members of
ERRO, Novitas
S.A, Don Mario
S.A and Aapresid
- Researchers
from Facultad de
Agronomía and
INTA
-Eduardo Montes
de Oca, URF
-Miguel Rapela,
Asociación
Semilleros
Argentinos
-Daniel Miró,
Novitas S.A
-O. Ernst,
Agronomía
- R. Díaz, INIA
- Company
members from
Deloitte and
Laisa S.A
-NGO Fundación
Viven
-Ismael Turbán,
El tejar
83 2010
XV Jornada de
Actualización Técnica en
Soja 2010: Camino a una
Agricultura Sustentable
ERRO
- Disease control
- Market analysis
- Hidden costs in
agriculture (soil
erosion)
2010
3er Encuentro Anual de
la MTO: Producir más
alimentos reduciendo el
impacto ambiental
MTO
- Agroecosystems
and human intervention: the social
responsibility
-Good agricultural
practices
2010
Taller de Intercambio
entre la Investigacion
Nacional y Técnicos
integrantes de Empresas
Agrícolas de la MTO
2da Jornada sonre
Biotecnología y
Agricultura
MTO
- About restrictions and prioritization of lines of
action
MTO
- Biotechnology
2010
Agro en Foco: Soja
IICA, El Observador and Balsina
& Asociados
- Market situation
- Research challenges
- Yields by soil
- Yields and sustainability
2010/04/14
Jornada de Reflexión: La
huella Ecológica en la
política Agropecuaria
Cámara Mercantil
de Productos del
País, IICA
-The ecological
footprint in the
agricultural policy
2010/10
3er Jornada Porteras
Abiertas:
Comprometidos con el
suelo
El Tejar
-Environmental
questions (soil,
water and carbon
emissions)
2010
-Members of
ERRO, Novitas
S.A, Don Mario
S.A and Aapresid
-Researcher from
Facultad de
Agronomia
(Oswaldo Ernst)
and INTA
- Researchers
from INIA,
Facultad de
Agronomía and
INTA
-Members
MGAP
-Producers
- Researchers
from INIA, Facultad de Agronomía and foreignners
- Researchers
from INIA and
INTA
- Members MGAP
- Companies
members from
ERRO and Balsina & Asociados
-Tabaré Aguerre,
Ministro
(MGAP)
-Manuel Ottero,
IICA
-Ernesto Vigiglio, INTA
- Ricardo Díaz,
INIA
-Ismael Turbán,
El Tejar
-Mariana Hill,
RENARE
-Silvana Alcoz,
DINAGUA
84 2010/12
Jornada CREA “Cultivar
cuidando es sembrar el
futuro”
Grupo La Cuchilla, CREA
-Use and soil
management
-Production
systems and their
sustainability
-Institutional
vision from
MGAP
-Mariana Hill,
RENARE
-Tabaré Aguerre,
MGAP
-Willy Bernaudo,
Kilafen
8.3) Regarding the sense of the meetings
The promotion of spaces of discussion on environmental issues related to
soybean agriculture in Uruguay (that I present later) cannot be taken as simple
indicators of an interest in solving the problem. In symbolic terms, they are
establishing the terms in which such problems might be legitimately postulated. This
explains what Oswaldo Ernst recognized as a striking situation when I asked about his
opinion on the cooperation among producers, scientific organizations and NGO’s in
the definition of the environmental problems of production and their solutions. Ernst
considered that:
It is positive. The issue becomes a topic of discussion, awareness is being
generated, and alternatives are searched. It has not been very successful in the
implementation of solutions. It is striking that with the 100% of the agronomists
employed we are still discussing how to solve an agronomic problem which
causes and solutions are known. Personal mail with Oswaldo Ernst, own
translation.
For Ernst, the issue of soil erosion is a problem of agronomics; something that
soybean businessmen will not have any difficulty to admit. Formulated as social
concern, soil erosion becomes thus the problem of how to manage the bad use that
some actors make of the land. The consequence has been some sort of new
polarization within the field of opinion between actors that believe that the state needs
to control the private activity and actors that consider that this is a violation of
freedom; that is to say, an intervention into the autonomy of the private sector. 83
83
Liberal sectors consider that this is a pseudo-scientific argument, that what it seeks in the last
instance is the intervention of the state in the private sphere. See for example: Julio Preve Folle, Cuál
Cuidado del Suelo, El País, 13 of September 2010.
85 8.4) The Seminar for a Sustainable Agriculture
The Seminar “Agricultura, Antes…” observed for example how the national and
international contexts of agriculture were altered during the last years. Dealing with
these topics were members from the OPYPA, Gonzalo Souto, and the Dirección de
Estadisticas Agropecuarias of the MGAP (Department of Agricultural Statistics,
DIEA), José María Ferrari, actors that were already present in the Seminar at INIA in
2005. These visions are characterized by an emphasis on statistical information and
the description in terms of structure of the agriculture in Uruguay.
Differently, but basing his analysis on the information produced by the DIEA,
Pedro Arbeletche (FAGRO) made a different reflection in terms of the social
differentiation and capital distribution seen in agriculture. He considers that the
introduction of “new farmers” as well as land and economic concentrations are the
principal impacts of the expansion of agriculture.84
Regarding the approaches that paid attention to the issue of the natural resources,
there were the presentations form Alfredo Bruno (PPR), Ricardo Díaz (INIA),
Oswaldo Ernst (FAGRO) and Carlos Victora from the Departamento de Recursos
Naturales of the MGAP (Natural Resources Office, RENARE). Diaz focused on how
the changes in the agricultural structure, the comparative reduction of pastures and
simplification in the diversity of crops rotations, implied that soil erosion levels were
rising. Also, he evaluated the sustainability of soybean agriculture in relation to
climate change (rain variability) and the increasing prices of the fuels, which affect
directly fertilizers’ prices that the model needs as the reduction of soil nutrients is
increasingly constant.85 Ernst explored the impact in soil erosion of different
alternatives in crop rotation: basing the solution of the problem on technologies that
are already developed86. Alfredo Bruno, however, focused on the evolution of the use
of different agrochemicals, estimating environmental impacts.87
84
“Los cambios de la Agricultura de secano del nuevo siglo en Uruguay”, Pedro Arbeletche, Las
Canas, Uruguay, 2007
85
“Agricultura, los cambios y su sustentabilidad”, Roberto Diaz, Las Canas, Uruguay, 2007
86
“La rotacion en sistemas de siembra directa continua: con o sin pasturas?”, Oswaldo Ernst, Las
Canas, Uruguay, 2007.
87
Plaguicidas usados en el cultivo de la soja. Evolucion de su uso y estimacion de sus impacto
ambiental”, Alfredo Bruno, Las Canas, Uruguay, 2007.
86 Lastly, Carlos Victora extended the issue of soil erosion and its biophysical
causes and presented what soon turned to be the central policy of natural resource
management in Uruguay related to soybean agriculture. Victora presented a pyramidal
perspective of social responsibility regarding the degradation and the care of the soils
(see 4.4.1)
Significantly, the issue of biotechnologies is only present as one of the
characteristics of the transformation of agriculture, and not as a topic of debate around
its environmental or social impacts; consequently, the impacts on biodiversity do not
constitute a central topic. The importance of this event in terms of the debate on
soybean agriculture can be noticed as the environmental issues -specially soil erosionbegin to be more present on different discourses within the soybean industry after it
(as I showed in the last section) and after 2008 begin also to appear on these industry
meetings (see table 1).
One interesting approach closing the meeting in Las Canas was the interpretation
of the phenomenon by Ernesto Agazzi, then under-secretary of the MGAP. Agazzi’s
discourse centered on the conflict that the agricultural expansion implied in terms of a
“project of country,” defending the importance of the “productores familiares.”
According to him,
It is already in place and it is a change in the agricultural companies in the
country… (…)this has social relevance, not from a social policy perspective but
(…) from the point of view of the social structure, of the occupation of the
territories by the families, of the type of businessman we are having (…) It has
relevance on the rural society, not only on the resources, the productive system.
In concrete the problem is that there are companies, there are farmers. (…) The
farmers work on the resources to get a product and live with that. But the reality
is that we have businessman, big businessman, farmers, big farmers, middle
farmers, small farmers, our country is a country where the productores
familiares, that is farmers that work on the lands, with little wage-earning work
force and that are in direct contact with the production activities, they are a
majority. Yet from 50000 they are now 40000. Do we need to substitute this with
anything else?
Aggazi also located the question of soil erosion within the discussion of a
“Project of country.” This is a political question whose principal characteristics is,
(and which differentiates it from other discourses) that the impact on soil erosion
includes the producers within the problem. In this sense, Agazzi gives a subject to the
87 “social” interest on soil erosion, situating him on one of the poles of the field of
discussion on soybean agriculture:
The local research on these matters is irreplaceable, many years ago studies
determined how intensive the use of our lands can be, there is a lot of
information about that (…) the view I brought is to look at the consequences on
the soil and on the ones that manage the lands that are the most important, these
are us or principally the farmers that make it directly (…) … there is a consensus
expressed on laws (…) that the use of the lands should be prioritized in function
of the whole society. (…) the soils have a lot of importance for the country, who
is the one that manages the soils, who is the one that takes decisions on it.
The key question for this important member of the MGAP is the project of
country, and appeal to the productores familiares as the central subject in that project.
Agazzi recovers elements of the discourse of Pedro Arbeletche on the concentration of
lands and questions the current development of agriculture. In symbolical terms, this
reference to the productores familiares helps Agazzi to legitimize at a discursive level
the social character of the actions that the MGAP is planning regarding the
management of the natural resources, specially the soils:
How far can the concentration of the lands on a few businessman be positive for
a project of country? They probably have great capital, access to technological
information and perhaps tools to develop this efficient productive process (..) …
maybe some companies make use of the proteins and make 1 or 2 millions
heads’ feed lots. Yet is this the project of country that we want? We think that it
isn’t, we need to have productores familiares (…) responsible of the production
and the use of the resources in favor of the country.
Ernesto Agazzi’s interpretation of the agricultural context is based on a special
sensibility that clearly identifies a specific economic actor: productores familiares.
The social importance of Uruguay’s lands is based on the use and close relationship to
it of these economic actors. They also constitute the majority in the agricultural
activity. In his discourse, Agazzi questions the values of the characteristics of the new
producers (management of information in technology, capital) in opposition to the
productores familiares. This is a very interesting discourse from the MGAP in 2007,
which situates into the discussion of the environmental impacts a specific socioeconomic actor, when the dominant tendency has been on the contrary to separate the
environmental impacts from the social impacts.
88 Therefore, Agazzi’s definition of the soil erosion problem exceeds the
dominant view on the “adaptation of technology,” “the production of knowledge” or
“the environmental education” that I discussed before. Agazzi’s view is related to land
concentration and the impact on productores familiares. In some way, it can be
consider that Agazzi’s discourse seeks the adherence of that social sector to the
policies of the MGAP. Yet it is also true that it represents an alternative perspective to
the visions from the orthodoxy in the field of opinion within the agricultural sector.
Furthermore, Agazzi’s definition of “the social” includes a specific actor (productores
familiares) that is quite different from other discourses in which “the social” is built
upon an imaginary relationship among “private interest”, “economic and technological
development” and “community benefices” as I will show here (see also Mario Guigou
before). For Agazzi, the economic importance of the land is based on a social
agreement and is expressed in laws. Here, the problem of natural resource
management is seen as a political problem that exceeds technological solutions: it is a
problem of interpretation in which the answers can only be achieved through
discussion and social participation.
8.5) The vision inside the CAF
It is from the CAF where the public promotion and the search of institutionalization of
specific management of the natural resources will be developed. The majority of the
cooperatives conforming the CAF are from the Litoral Oeste (Littoral West), the area
where soybean agriculture is more present. In this sense, the discourse of the CAF
regarding the question of soybean agriculture is important as representative of a social
sector where the greater impacts are found. This sector considers, for example, that the
arrival of soybean agriculture helped many farmers to clear their debt’s problems,
specially after the crisis of 2000.
The members of CAF are the sector from agriculture that expressed more strongly the
awareness on soil erosion88, oscillating from the enthusiasm and the awareness for the
88
This would suggest the possibility of analyzing the problem of soil erosion as a class problem: a
problem that in its structure and logic represent the interest of a specific social class.
89 phenomenon. They also tend to assign the problem of soil erosion to “bad use
practices.”
Soybean came to stay because they are implementing all the technological
package, because there are consumers, because the world needs proteins… all
that I understand, that is OK, but it is not sustainable from an economic
perspective… (…) … not to mention from an ecological view (…) we forget
about the pastures (…) we forget about everything… (…) The thinking is on a
short-time perspective: it is today, right now, no one sees anything further away.
(…)… today we are in this, it is a boom, vehicles are sold, machinery is sold …
everything is working out. So who is going to stop and think? No one, no one
thinks. Alfredo Torres, CADOL (cooperative member of CAF) Interview, Lisa
and Matilda 2007, my translation.
Within the cooperatives we had the sensibility of saying: ‘here we have to be
concerned because with this agricultural intensification model there is a huge
danger, it is better that we think first. Interview with Juan Pedro Hounie, CAF,
December 2010, Montevideo, my translation
You have the anti-soybean fundamentalists, with a whole philosophy, and here
we are the farmers making the most from a technology that changed the way of
production (…) a technology that let us work with more securities. Interview
with Juan Pedro Hounie, CAF, December 2010, Montevideo, my translation,
In the Congress what worried us was that it was already evident, or that the
presence specially of Argentinean farmers, of more activity… (…) in 2003 starts
another agriculture… (…) we needed to do something, the consciousness of the
farmers is not enough to control the bad use… (…) [There was agreement] on
the manual of good practices and that the Ministry had the control about what
people do and that it recommended good practices: pastures or crop rotations.
Interview with Juan Pedro Hounie, CAF, December 2010, Montevideo, my
translation.
8.6) El Tejar and Porteras Abiertas
El Tejar organize “Porteras abiertas” in cooperation with different rural
organizations from the rural area where the meeting were hold (Grecco, Rio Negro;
Tomas de Cuadra, Durazno and Paraje Aramendia in Lavalleja). “Porteras abiertas” is
a base for practice the promotion, characteristic of the “gerenciadores agrarios”, of a
“new culture”. The events are a place where the company promotes a culture of
enterprising in congruence with its philosophy of “developing persons”, “being a
school of leaders”, “involving the next generation in dreams and values of person and
90 family”. It is promoted as having a strong “social character”, collecting benefices for
diverse communal organizations (for example, rural schools) and discusses diverse
strategies to produce social benefices in enterprising -corporative governance,
relationship company-community, or the importance of human resources in chain
value. The technological development is not an issue of the presentations but it is
instead the key aspect of the interactive part of the events: when the assistants visit the
installations where El Tejar in cooperation with scientists from INIA and FAGRO
develop technological innovations.
In “Puertas Abiertas”, there is a mutual reinforcement between the topics and the
“social character” of the event, building on the imaginary relationship between the
private sector and the local community. This relationship is based on a mutual
development between the private and the community, where for example human
resource formation gives benefices to both sides. The event is a clear example in
practice of that “cultural project” that some actors proclaim that I developed on the
section 4.2.4. In this sense, “Puertas Abiertas” presents the idea that a positive social
transformation is in place in Uruguay, sustaining this with the changes that are seen in
the phenomena of agricultural enterprising. For example, Ismael Turban (Director of
El Tejar in Uruguay) presented a project for livestock farming defining “the new vs.
the old paradigm”89. The “new paradigm” involved, between other things, the
emergence of the young businessman in place of the elder farmer, the cooperation
between firms in networks (“co-ompetition”), a comparative advantage based on
knowledge and information in contraposition to property, plant and equipment and a
flexible and dynamic strategy in contrast with the rigid strategy of the “old
paradigm”.
8.7) The academic community and its symbolic role during the RS
A way of analyzing the professionals’ social role during the RS is to see where in
the field of positions regarding the changes of agriculture these professionals can have
impacts with their public intervention and professional activity. When I asked to the
89 Proyecciones para Uruguay y la Region II, Ismael Turban, Young, Rio Negro, Entre Rios, 30 de Octubre, 2009 91 Dean of the Faculty of Agronomy, Fernando García, about how the change in the
country’s agriculture impacts on the agronomic profession, he manifested that there
were no agronomic professionals unemployed and that students begging working
before even ending their studies90. Employment is commonly recognized within the
agronomist community as one of the positive effects of soybean agriculture in
Uruguay. On the other hand, García indicated that the “Comision Sectorial de
Investigaciones Cientificas de la UdelaR” prioritized in 2008 the topic of “the impacts
of the increased farming areas and the modifications experienced by agriculture during
2002 and 2008” for the presentation of research projects that give insights to the public
discussion. The objective of these project in the University is to “promote the study of
relevant and frequently polemic topics, providing to the interested citizens the
elements of judgment that allow the elaboration of personal and informed opinions”
(Préchac García, Fernando et. al. , 2010) This example shows that when it gets to the
production of knowledge on the issue, the political relevance of the professionals for
Uruguay becomes palpable.
An interesting example of what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “contribution to the
misrecognition of the power relations” by systems of classification that in their logic
reproduce the objective positions in society is the book “Agricultural intensification:
opportunities and threats for a productive and natural country” (Préchac García,
Fernando et. al., 2010)
The book deals with the three habitual and interconnected topics related to
agriculture that I could find when exploring the discussions over soybean agriculture
for the period 2000-2010: agricultural and socio-economic changes, biotechnologies
and environmental impacts (biodiversity and soil erosion). In the book, these topics are
presented separately and there is no effort in articulating them in a common reflection.
Moreover, the holistic importance of the book’s questions is left to the partiality of
every single chapter. This aspect is important given the conscious intention in
contributing to the public debate. In symbolic terms, the book reproduces the tendency
to enclose those aspects of the expansion of agriculture -socio-economic changes,
biotechnologies and environmental impacts- as single topics that conform a field of
opinion were actors can agree or disagree with one or the other interpretation (e.g. that
90 Personal mail with Garcia, January 2011. 92 GMO’s are bad for the environment or that that it is not true and they are a good
economic opportunity for agriculture, that the economic impact of soybean agriculture
works against family producers or that it reactivates the economy and renovates the
country’s culture, that the intensification of agriculture have negative impacts on the
natural resources or that these negative impacts are only the result of “bad practices”,
etc.) As Bourdieu indicates, the instruments of knowledge are political instruments
that “contribute to the reproduction of the social world by producing immediate
adherence to the world, seen as self-evident and undisputed, of which they are the
product and of which they reproduce the structures in a transformed form”. Through
the production of knowledge, these professionals reinforce the classification of the
expansion and intensification of agriculture in the terms of the symbolically produced
field of opinion. For example, some of the chapters are a reproduction of the same
interpretations (e.g socio-economic changes, best crop rotation system including soy)
that the authors made during diverse industry meetings that I also talked about before.
Other chapters reinforce the questions that have been raised from some sectors of the
society that are reluctant to welcome the later development of Uruguay’s agriculture:
the impact of biotechnologies on other agricultural activities and the impact of the
agricultural expansion and implementation of technologies on the country’s
biodiversity.
Moreover, one significative section of the book is a final statement of Pablo
Arbeletche that seems to define the limits for the opportunity of a productive and
natural country:
In the future there will be less actors in this (ed. economic) sector but they will
be larger and more specialized, sustained on processes which efficiency depends
on the scale and that are highly mobile. This means that clear and specific
responsibilities need to be established for the new farmers, landowners and the
state, principally regarding the good use and maintenance of the quantity and
quality of the natural resources.
In this commentary, Pablo Arbeletche affirms that the economic process that he has
been describing since 2003 is inevitable. At the same time, he establish that the
management of natural resources should be considered and defined as a mutual
responsibility between farmers, owners and the state within this economic context.
This interpretation of natural resource management is coincident with the later
definitions of soil erosion as a social problem that I presented before: “soil erosion”
93 emerged as the hegemonic natural resource problem within this symbolic system,
satisfying the rising interest on environmental impacts, as a topic that can include
everyone’s interests, that can be referred to a national identity –as a problem or as
virtue- but that at the same time offers the possibility to exclude the environmental
impact that soybean agriculture might have on other producers and its socio-economic
background. Given the absence of answers to the questions arisen at the book’s
introduction, the symbolical weight of this type of commentaries is important, much
more as it is situated at the end of the book with the title “The foreseeable future”.
8.8) The MTO and scientific research
The MTO was created by initiative of members of INIA and is conformed by
producers and different research institutions. A function of the MTO is therefore to
identify research interests between these groups of actors. The MTO is a significant
case that shows how the MGAP, researchers and soybean producers define interests
and perspectives. At the MTO’s “First Meeting on Soybean” in 2008, for example, the
actors and discourses are very similar to the Seminar at INIA in 2005 or the one
organized by CAF in 2007.
A significant agreement between the members of the MTO was to redefine the
prioritization of topics after 2009. “Manejo sustentable en nuevas areas del país”
(Sustainable management in new areas”) took then the first place; significantly, this
topic was present since 2005 after the Seminar at the INIA as “Soja en el sistema”
(Soybean in the system) that tried to understand how to make the adaptation of
soybean agriculture to the environmental and agricultural conditions of Uruguay, but
now acquired more importance believed the actors. The topic searches to produce
knowledge on the new agricultural areas and their soils, having as framework the
“good agricultural practices” and the relationship with the livestock agriculture91.
In 2010 at the “Taller de Intercambio entre la Investigación Nacional y Técnicos de
Empresas Agrícolas Integrantes de la MTO” (Exchange Workshop between National
Researchers and Technicians of the Agricultural Companies Members of the MTO)
91
“Comunicado de la Mesa Tecnológica de Oleaginosos a los Investigadores de la Facultad de
Agronomia, la Facultad de Ciencias y el INIA”, Comisión Directiva, s/f. 94 the topic keeps its relevance but suffered once again a change of name:
“Sustentabilidad de la Nueva Agricultura” (The Sustainability of the New Agriculture)
Also, now the priority is on producing knowledge on the agricultural areas in terms of
a “systematization of the use and management of the soils which comprehended the
definition of use plans and supervision and control, agriculture by ambient and
description of the territories”; “crop rotations” keeps its position and then “fertilization
and dynamics in nutrients” and “use and management of water” continue the list92. As
I showed before, “agriculture by ambient” is a technology that satisfies the objectives
of rising the productivity and responding to the management of the sustainability of
the soils. Here it is a key instrument to follow the use plans and supervision and
control promoted by the RENARE.
92
“Taller de Intercambio entre la investigación nacional y técnicos de empresas agrícolas integrantes
de la MTO”, Informe Final, MTO, 2010.