Three food production logics: Are there alternatives to agribusiness?

Abstract

Departing from the global development of ‘agribusiness’, three distinct logics of production can be identified in the agricultural sector and in food production in particular: 1) peasant, 2) agribusiness, and 3) farmer or Chacarera (in Argentina). This last logic of production, in our hypothesis, maintains some interesting characteristics that have not yet completely disappeared but are at risk of disappearing in the medium term. This typology assumes different relations with the land, fundamental differences in production and labour processes, in production outlooks, and in the type of capital intervening, etc. Even if in our country for historical reasons the peasant form of production has not had a marked significance, it has recovered importance amidst the indigenous populations’ processes of land recovery, together with the many criollos displaced from commercial agriculture that are also implementing this mode of production, encouraged by the guidelines from the international organization La Vía Campesina.