The development of a Natural Resource Management Policy
A discourse analysis on soybean farming during Uruguay’s agricultural regime shift (2000-2010)
Sustainable Enterprising Master´s programme 2009/11, 120 credits
Nicolás Castagno
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.
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.
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
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
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 year
1. 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.
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 ecosystem
2. 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.
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 social- ecological 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
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.
3My 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
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 practices
4(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 un- historical 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.
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.
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).
5A regime shift takes place when a threshold is crossed and a CAS reaches a new “stable state”
6in 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.
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)
Frances Westley (2002) highlights power as a dimension for the analysis of NRM within what he calls a PD
7. 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.
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, therebyfounding 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 arethe product and of which they reproduce the structures in a transformed form.
(Bourdieu, 1994: 164).
8For 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 thealternatives 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
9My 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).
The interviews were opened, with guiding questions and the possibility for the interviewees to express their own view on soybean agriculture
10. 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
11These 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 use
12(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.
13Agricultural producers that concentrate on crop agriculture replaced
14many 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.
agriculture in combination with “pasturas” (winter forage) and livestock farming.
1515
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).
Indicators
SES Domains Variables
Before 2000 After 2000
Ecological Land Use Pastures in combination with livestock farming∗
Reduction of pastures and livestock areas and expansion of croplands
Ecological Land Use Less than 400.000
hectares of crop lands by 2000/2001
By 2008/2009 only soybean croplands extended to 578.000 hectares
Ecological Land use Dominance of winter
crops until 2000 (60%)
Dominance of summer crops since 2000 (reaching the 70% in 2008)
Ecological Environment
impact
Genetic erosion of natural grass consequence of extended grazed lands
Soil erosion and reduction of biodiversity consequence of intensification and use of agrochemicals.
Socioeconomic Social structure “Old producers”.
Dominance of livestock farmers.∗
Reduction of “old farmers”, incursion of transnational companies and “new producers.” Dominance of agricultural managers.
Socioeconomic Land tenure Land owner and
“Medianeria” ∗
Land owner and short and medium time renting
Socioeconomic Land concentration Systems with +1000 ha.
represent the 25% of total area.
Systems with +1000 ha. represent the 45 % of the total area.
Socioeconomic Technology Agriculture-livestock farming
Continuous agriculture: Direct agriculture, technological package
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
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.
16All 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).
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.
17These 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
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.
18Moreover, 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).
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 planting
19). 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.
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 agriculture- livestock 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 livestock- agriculture 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
