Last modified: 2018-12-14
Abstract
In this work is performed an analysis of the production of commodities in some countries of Latin America with special focus on the case of soybean and Brazil, showing the transformations that this agricultural activity leads in rural space. We focused our analysis on the following aspects: the effects of expansion of the soybean on the deforestation of virgin areas, the measurement of its eminently extensive character despite the implementation of strong technological development, the process of substitution and marginalization of other traditional activities and producers of rural areas, the comparison of occupation and incomes indicators by area between crops and impacts on the land structure. It is empirically shown that this activity leads to derisory benefits in terms of productive inclusion (occupation) and, beyond this, destroys or marginalizes other alternatives that occupy and generate income much more substantially and for the more equitable and balanced rural development. Finally, it is concluded that Latin American countries that are developing instruments of economic policy to strengthen this excludent model, as well as abandoning other policies in direction to more equitable rural development, they should rethink these strategies, otherwise they would create social and economic environmental conditions more perverse than those we are witnessing today.