Socio-Environmental Controversies in Peasant Family Farming in Chile’s Ñuble Region

Abstract

Analysis of the discourse on socio-environmental controversies among peasant family farmers in the Ñuble region of south-central Chile—small organic producers, conventional small producers, agroecological producers, and members of peasant unions—allows the identification of their positions on the controversy between alternatives to development and alternative development.

Un análisis del discurso sobre las controversias socioambientales que existen entre las familias campesinas en la región de Ñuble, en el centro-sur de Chile (pequeños productores orgánicos, pequeños productores convencionales, productores agroecológicos y miembros de sindicatos campesinos) permite identificar sus posturas en torno a la polémica entre alternativas al desarrollo y el desarrollo alternativo.

Keywords

Socio-environmental controversies Economies Peasant family farming Agroecology Alternatives to development

In this research we problematize the discourses of organizations and producers participating in peasant family farming in the Ñuble region of Chile¹ in an effort to shape an analytical perspective for the further study of transformations and problems of the sector. “Peasant family farming” is defined by Organic Law 18.910 (1990) as the cultivation of arable lands with no more than 12 hectares of basic irrigation² and a value of no more than 3,500 promotion units,³ regardless of the ownership regime (Berdegué, 2014). However, this legal definition leaves out the socio-material dimension—the relationship between nature and society and different farming styles (van der Ploeg, 2016). While peasant family farming is said to be threatened with disappearance, we argue that it nevertheless persists. The modernization theory of the 1970s and 1980s viewed the peasant as destined either to disappear or to turn into an agroindustrial entrepreneur (Hilmi and Burbi, 2015). During the past 40 years, this idea has had a profound impact on peasant families. For half of this period (1973–1990) Chile lived under Pinochet’s dictatorship, in which policies with regard to peasant family farming were developed to break up the processes initiated with the agrarian reform of the 1960s. With the return to democracy, not only were the ideals of the agrarian reform not restored but in fact the imperative of modernization was carried farther, creating uncertainty and controversy. The discourses we gathered during our fieldwork show, instead of a decline of peasant family farming, its persistence and change, including a diversity of farming styles and interesting tensions that we hope will enrich the discussion of the frameworks of alternatives to development and alternative development.

The research was done in Coihueco, San Nicolás, and San Ignacio in south-central Chile. Coihueco has the highest proportion of organic production for export, San Nicolás is being promoted as the country’s first agroecological commune, and San Ignacio has groups of conventional producers that are starting to gain experience in organization and association. The information gathered during our fieldwork was guided by semistructured questions adapted to the interviewees’ discourses. The main topics of these questions were economic activity, relationship with the place, networks, and diagnosis and projections for the future. We also employed participant observation, attending meetings and working on farms. We visited three leading organic farms in Coihueco, two agroecological producers in San Nicolás, and a conventional producer in San Ignacio who has an important position in the Diguillín Peasants’ Association. In addition, the experience of the Ranquil National Peasant and Indigenous Confederation (hereafter Ranquil) was included because of its important role in Chilean peasant unions. Established in 1968, it was the result of a merger of several organizations created during the preceding decades. As a peasant union, Ranquil is linked to the Communist Party of Chile and was the union with the greatest increase in membership⁴ during the boom of the agrarian reform (Kay, 1974). For this sector, the return to democracy was a disappointing experience because the democratic government did not reinstate the abandoned and damaged agrarian reform. On the contrary, the agroindustrial landscape of monoculture was promoted. Thus the perspective of Ranquil on peasant family farming was an interesting point of view for comparison with the experiences related to different farming styles.

Among the farming styles that we identified—organic, conventional, agroecological, and peasant union—there are substantial differences in practices and discourses primarily linked to the use of chemicals, which organic and agroecological producers reject. According to Nicholls and Altieri (1997: 93), the conventional model of agriculture is an expression of the industrial agricultural model based on the ideas of the Green Revolution of the early 1970s. The Green Revolution focused on high-yielding varieties dependent on purchased packages of chemical, mechanical, and energy inputs. While it promised enormous amounts of food that would end poverty and hunger, it has left us in the current environmental crisis with “land degradation, salinization, pesticide pollution of soil, water, and food chains, depletion of ground water, genetic homogeneity, and associated vulnerability” (Altieri and Rosset, 1996: 165). This model is in crisis because of the resistance of rural and urban communities, civic organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and social movements to its consequences.

The vegetables consumed in the big cities of the Biobío and Ñuble regions are mostly the product of small and medium-sized conventional farmers. The Diguillín Peasants’ Association of San Ignacio brings together about 20 small to medium-sized conventional producers who started to work together in the 1980s. In contrast to this conventional modern agriculture, agroecology is based on scientific and methodological designs inspired by the ethnoecological rationality of traditional peasant and indigenous communities (Altieri, 1995: 25). In San Nicolás, an agroecological model is being developed by some 400 families, and a new collective known as the San Nicolás Women’s Roundtable is working to raise awareness of the fundamental role of women in farming. This collective is part of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women and, with the support of the municipality, is taking steps to become Chile’s first agroecological commune. Meanwhile, organic production prevails among small producers focused on agroexports (Altieri, 1995). In Chile, 66.9 percent of the area in organic production is in the Biobío region, including Ñuble (Ríos Núñez and Núñez Yáñez, 2016). The question that emerges is whether organic production responds to market opportunities or is an alternative to the dominant production model or a mixture of the two. We have come to the conclusion that organic agriculture is experiencing conventionalization (Cid-Aguayo, 2018) partly because the commitment to productive techniques that benefit human health and the quality of the soil can be circumstantial and dependent on market advantages. Furthermore, the initiative of identifying healthy products with a label that guarantees authenticity has been appropriated by the logic of the corporate food regime (Friedmann, 2000), and one consequence of this appropriation is the conventionalization of the “organic” label (Cid-Aguayo, 2018). By prioritizing profit, producers have developed an organic farming style that is reduced to employing a certain set of permitted inputs but at the same time working with monoculture and the employment of temporary labor without formal contracts (Raynolds, 2004).

Chile’S Agrarian Structure After The Reform

Before the agrarian reform that took place during Eduardo Frei Montalva’s government (1964–1970) and was further developed during Salvador Allende’s (1970–1973), the structure of the agricultural system consisted of large-scale agriculture (latifundios), which could not produce the amount of food that the market demanded. Thus the agrarian reform emerged in response to the need for a better distribution of land, and the peasant unions were intended to increase production rather than to socialize access to land, The triumph of Allende’s project in 1970 produced both better land distribution and a growing public demand for more participation. An incipient popular power began to argue against private property (Gaudichaud, 2003) and organized as peasant settlements and cooperatives and the socially owned factories known as cordones industriales. Under Augusto Pinochet’s de facto government (1973–1990) productive relationships in the countryside were again transformed, and the agrarian structure began to be ruled by the market, technological innovation, precarious work, and the export of commodities (Crispi, 1981; Murray, 1999). These changes were part of a process known as the “agrarian counterreform,” an institutional and cultural strategy implemented to break up the productive relations built under the agrarian reform. The intention of this strategy was not to reconstruct the old latifundios but to impose a new capitalist agriculture, now promoted by the military government, to stop the development of the agricultural model involving small producers associated in cooperatives (Chonchol, 2017). After the military coup, a third of the lands expropriated by the agrarian reform were restored to their original owners, while the rest were designated for agribusiness and contributed to its development (Gómez and Echenique, 1988). This new agrarian structure threatened the continuity of peasant family farming and gave rise to the idea of its abandonment (Carvalho, 2005). Nevertheless, in Chile, peasant family farming remains an important segment of the economy: the 260,000 parcels registered as peasant family farms represent 90 percent of the productive units of the country, generate 22 percent of the gross value of agricultural production, and absorb 33 percent of the agricultural waged labor (INDAP, 2014).

The Ministry of Agriculture’s Office of Agricultural Studies and Policies says that the Biobío region (which includes Ñuble) represents 28 percent of the country’s arable land. Of this land, 78.9 percent is devoted to lumber, followed by cereals and forage plants (ODEPA, 2016: 5). While peasant family farming remains important, the period between 1997 and 2007⁵ saw a reduction of 10 percent in production units and 8 percent in contribution to the gross value of agricultural production (from 30 percent to 22 percent) (INDAP, 2014). This decline, however, rather than supporting the hypothesis of its disappearance, could simply demonstrate its resistance in a threatening context. It is important to consider the impossibility of access to productive capitalization, which drives peasant farmers to migrate or work the land of others. At the same time, organic agriculture receives state training programs as a productive sector outside the historicity of peasant organizations (Tima Pecchi and Fuentes Cruces, 2007, Berdegué, 2014). For these reasons, social movements and national/international organizations such as the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations and the Vía Campesina express the long-term infeasibility of agribusiness (Mejía Gutiérrez, 2009; Rubio, 2011). Thus there is a contradiction between policies that encourage small production and policies that stimulate large agroindustrial monoproduction—a controversial scenario with regard to the coexistent production processes and their socio-environmental impacts (Chateauraynaud, 2011; Perez, 2013).

Because of the socio-environmental consequences of production, peasant family farmers’ organizations have different strategies. The main difference is of course between conventional producers and both organic and agroecological producers. Nevertheless, the Diguillin Peasants’ Association is beginning to adopt an environmentally friendly discourse, encouraging conventional producers to turn to agroecology. During our fieldwork this topic emerged as one of the most difficult challenges. Many producers are in debt to agribusiness and have committed their production to it, using seeds and supplies that come from the very companies to which they are in debt. Also, peasants seem to have forgotten or do not know how to use other techniques. This circle of dependency and ignorance of alternatives started with the military government’s economic model, based on unfair contracts between agribusinesses and small producers. As a result, loans with interest rates of 8–12 percent were necessary just to cover production costs and living expenses (Murray, 1999). This credit captivity made small producers dependent on foreign requirements, and the lack of market protection marginalized small farmers, while the assets that they once had, mostly land and water rights, were appropriated by agribusiness (González Meyer, 2013).

Theoretical Perspective: Postdevelopment and Diverse Economies in the Analysis of Socio-Environmental Controversies

At the beginning of the 1990s, the consolidation of the Washington Consensus changed the understanding of developmentalism. Besides the technical arguments for economic growth, mostly aligned with International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies, the Washington Consensus provided a unilineal cultural benchmark, that trust in modernization is a synonym for free trade Nevertheless, once it was shown that to consider development theory objective was a mistake, a corollary of its being a cultural process, different ways of thinking about how to build a better world, now including other systems of knowledge that had been systematically rejected, began to be explored. Consequently, a need was recognized for a Western anthropology that could reevaluate the fundamental concepts and deep-rooted instincts that rule the social sciences, such as the modern intuition that separates social elements from natural ones (Escobar, 1998). This intuition, related to the development discourse that considers nature a provider, is contradicted by the evidence of environmental deterioration. In a similar direction, modernity, supported by mechanisms of purification such as the divisions between nature and culture or subject and object (Latour, 2007, 2008) obscures the constant hybridization of nature and cultures.

Looking beyond these modern divisions demands a recognition of the symmetry of humans and nature. Adopting a framework guided by this principle sheds light on a plethora of environmental conflicts that require prudence and respect for rather than domination over nature. These conflicts express disagreements with regard to the environmental impacts of certain productive enterprises (Chateauraynaud, 2011) that we call “socio-environmental controversies” because communities, collectives, institutions, and enterprises argue over them in terms of their own worldviews and interests. For example, in the controversy that surrounds the effects of agricultural production there are severely critical positions, such as the alternatives-to-development, and others, such as the ecological-modernization or alternative-development, that advocate adaptation to market conditions. Unceta (2014) and Gudynas (2014) offer interesting theoretical tools for better understanding this difference. Unceta proposes three categories for evaluating the complexity of an alernatives-to-development approach: dematerialization, demercantilization, and decentralization. Dematerialization seeks to transform the physical bases of the productive model and incorporate philosophical considerations of the importance of nonmaterial and spiritual processes. Demercantilization is linked to the reduction of the market sphere in favor of multiple diversified exchange processes. Finally, decentralization implies changing the scale of production and systems of exchange to empower local markets. In contrast, Gudynas proposes a typology determined by the degree of conservatism and extractivism present in the different conceptions of development that appear in progressive policies: (1) maintenance, development in its traditional sense; (2) rectification, proposing administrative adaptations in the state and the market to stimulate and apply measures of social impact; and (3) transformation, proposing market interventions without neglecting the metaphysics of development such as in the nationalization of companies. Maintenance, rectification, and transformation correspond to different degrees of alternative development and reflect developmentalism’s contradictions.

Employing these theoretical tools, it is possible to see the dynamics of co-optation and conceptual transaction between alternative and conservative elements, and this opens up a wide range of diversity through the functional revalorization of signs that are shaped by “people’s interested use of signs in their own projects . . . as meaning is risked in a cosmos fully capable of contradicting the symbolic systems that are presumed to describe it” (Sahlins, 2013: 149). Within this process of functional revalorization, heterogeneity and controversial issues emerge, since “heterogeneity is never a principle of exclusion; it never prevents coexistence, conjunction, or connection” (Foucault, 2008: 42).

Approaching socio-environmental controversies as an expression of economic diversity implies rethinking the economy, considering it “a site of intrinsic diversity, populated by both capitalist and non-capitalist actors, where economic activity may or may not reproduce capitalism” (Healy, 2016: 9). The suffix “ism” expresses capitalist relationships of production as a reality that is assumed ineluctable . Without the “ism” effect, economic diversity is not solely a reaction to capitalism (Gibson-Graham, 2007). This change of perspective does not mean that pressures from capitalism disappear. Instead, economic diversity situates capitalism in its proper dimensions and function, making room for other practices and imaginaries (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Discursive and practical fields of the alternatives-to-development (AtoD) and alternative-development (AD) approaches. The overlap of the two circles marks the area of controversy. Within this area, quadrants A–D represent the relationships between the socio-environmental and diverse economies traversed by the vector of diverse/conventional economies. Outside this area are shown the theoretical tools employed by each approach. The question mark in quadrant C represents the theoretical contradiction between the conventional economy and socio-environmental orientation toward postdevelopment.

Controversial Topics

Five controversial topics were identified as uncertainties shared by all the sectors interviewed: commercialization, labor strategies, health problems, water supply problems, and perspectives on the future.

Commerce

No matter which farming style we are looking at, the commercialization of production is essential for the reproduction of peasant family farming. We have argued for the continuity of peasant family farming despite its being under threat. In particular, commerce is experienced as a threatening environment because of the way in which the market conditions it. Nevertheless, each farming style has strategies for achieving fair trade that are more or less dependent on market conditions and demands based on its experiences. Comparison of small organic with conventional producers shows that their strategies of association for commercialization are the same: the aim is to maximize volume. The difference is that in the case of conventional production the dialogue with the buyers is direct: “If I have 2 hectares or 3 hectares, what business are you going to make there if the supermarket needs thousands of tons of potatoes? So we believe that if we brought farmers together we could reach other markets. . . . The commercial conditions are different, but you can also sit at the table and talk to the supermarket manager!” (president of the Diguillín Peasants’ Association). Organic farmers found it difficult to export their production without intermediaries, and this is why producers organized—not only to increase volume but also to avoid depending on industrial export (organic producer from Coihueco):

Did we say why we cannot export our fruit directly? . . . From the moment I give the fruit to the company, I feel that then it is no longer my responsibility. . . . Maybe on the way the person who loaded the truck or who made the pallets was confused and placed fruit that did not correspond with the fruit that I sent. Then, they may come to a small producer and say, “I will not be able to pay for your fruit as organic because it came out with some prohibited product.”

Selling their products in small markets is not an option for the organic businesses because selling it in large quantities offers the opportunity to negotiate a better price and eliminates having to search for small-quantity buyers. In contrast, for the agroecological producers from San Nicolás, subsistence is complemented by local marketing that benefits not only the small producers but also local consumers: “If it were not for the peasants, what would the city eat? Remember that we do agroecology, but we do it for self-sustenance. We eat and sell all the surplus in local or regional markets and, if we have enough, in the national market” (agroecological producer from San Nicolás). The reinforcement of local connections between producers and consumers also strengthens solidarity: “Every month we have a meeting, and we strongly encourage solidarity, because it has been lost. Among our ancestors there were mingas: you go, help with the threshing, and then the neighbor comes to help you thresh here” (agroecological producer from San Nicolás, member of the San Nicolás Women’s Work Group).

Regarding the difference between dependency on market conditions for conventional producers and the export requirement for organic producers, Ranquil emphasizes agroecology as a necessity: “Today people have total dependency. . . . If you do not have money to buy seed, you are wretched. And others depend on commercial inputs. Then, when the Confederation supports agroecology . . . it’s a necessity!” (Ranquil leader from Bustamante).

Labor

The uncertainties surrounding commercialization bring instability to the whole sector and have an impact on the nature of work opportunities in the countryside. The mechanization of productive work is increasing, and the forestry and agricultural industries tend to absorb the available seasonal workforce: “Here on a farm they have planted 20 hectares of canola, and on another they want to plant 20 hectares of peas. How much labor do they need? They are only three” (subsistence producer turning to agroecology, member of Ranquil in Bustamante). Despite the shortage of labor, seasonal work continues to be an economic strategy for those who lack access to land such as the poorer families in the cities and small towns. This is part of an unregulated sector that is calling for specific legislation to protect its rights.⁶

For organic farmers, labor relationships take on a particular dynamic related to the conventionalization of organic production (Cid Aguayo, 2011). The small organic producer may either work as a seasonal farmer on the land of others to make additional money or invest in certification, supplies, and workers. Labor for peasant family farming production is not abundant: “In summer, you do not pay per day . . . you pay by kilo or per tray. So there are people who earn less, people who earn more. It all depends on the effort that you put into it. . . . So we have been forced to hire labor from other cities. For example, last year, from Chillán, I hired a full van with 12 people” (organic producer from Coihueco). What began as a productive option linked to protecting the environment now represents a business opportunity, abandoning its original values, which nowadays are closer to the agroecological movement. Also, because of the costs of certification and organic supplies, small farmers with no initial capital cannot access this market. So, organic production introduces internal differences in peasant family farming and makes distinctions related not to the size of one’s landholdings but to the capital available for investment. Within this circuit, labor relations have changed:“I used to harvest the corn and they [workers] would come earlier and start making humitas or empanadas.⁷ . . . and we all were excited and came to share. It was like family. . . . Now this does not happen anymore, because of the commercial part. . . . Now we go to that farm to pick up fruit, we get paid, and ‘Bye!’” (organic producer from Coihueco). What used to be familial labor relations have turned into strictly commercial ones. In contrast, among agroecological producers from San Nicolás, there is an ongoing process in which people who used to work on others’ farms are now gaining awareness of the advantages of self-supplying (agroecological producer from San Nicolás):

I used to work for a farm because I did not want to be a burden to my husband. Thank God I never had an accident, because I took good care of myself. . . . I left [seasonal work] behind because now I do not work for others anymore, and many ladies like me have understood that self-supplying by their own means is better than going to other farms and getting a disease in the sun.

Health

The quality of work is measured in relation to the conditions of payment, access to social security, freedom to organize oneself, free access to information, and the labor-health situations of the populations adjacent to the conventional farms, seasonal workers, and consumers: “[A conventional producer] used chemicals and more chemicals, and it turns out that his own daughter was born with a malformation, and it turns out that the doctors themselves told him it was because of the use of chemicals, but he never accepted it” (organic producer from Coihueco). Despite the lack of institutional data, organizations such as the Latin American Anti-Pesticide Action Network and the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women have put together ethics tribunals in which producers, activists, academics, and public authorities can be informed directly by the people affected about the labor exploitation and exposure to toxins that conventional agriculture and agribusiness generate. It is estimated that there are between 3,500 and 4,000 cases of pesticide poisoning per year, but only one case in five is reported. According to the Ministry of Health in 2013 there were 552; in 2014 there were 825, and as of June there had been 224 in 2015. Also in 2015 there were three cases of massive poisoning affecting babies, pregnant women, and children (information provided by María Elena Rozas of the Anti-Pesticide Action Network during an ethics tribunal in Santiago de Chile in 2015). In sum, it is clear that the health hazards of conventional production call for stronger intervention by the state: “Here in Ñuble, the forestry industry applies herbicides, and all the inputs that are left there come down with the rivers. So, I believe that here the medical college has a tremendous complicity with all this. . . . I believe that in Chile there is no peasant community without poisoned people” (Ranquil leader from Bustamante).

State intervention must include not only effective prohibition of dangerous pesticides but also changes in the cultural pattern that is associated with their application. Education with regard to the consequences of the presence of toxins in both production and consumption is very important: “I used to go to the market and buy any apple because I saw it as beautiful . . . but suddenly one learns, ‘I prefer to buy this apple that maybe is not so pretty but has no chemicals, so I’m going to buy it from my neighbor, because not everybody uses chemicals’” (organic producer from Coihueco). Awareness should incentivize changes in consumption and production—alternatives to the hegemonic markets and productive techniques. In the case of San Nicolás’s agroecological model, local state policies have led to workshops that have initiated awareness among producers: “We have been doing practices, training, and modules of worm farming and biodigesters. . . . No organic matter is lost; instead it is incorporated into the soil to restore productivity. . . . At the beginning it was difficult, but we have managed to understand that the diseases that we suffer are the product of chemicals” (San Nicolás agroecological producer, member of the Peasant Committee).

Access to Water

This recognition that conventional agriculture and the forestry industry are threatening human health is also part of a wider critique of the current agrarian model. One of the most controversial issues is access to water, which has been considered a private good since Pinochet’s de facto government. In spite of the international consensus that access to water is a basic right for everyone, the 1980 Constitution established a legal framework that made water a market good susceptible to being exploited by the logics of speculation and profit: “Chile has privatized water. . . . Buying water today is almost impossible. In Copiapó a share of water is worth about 40 million pesos.⁸ . . . Who buys water in Chile? The mining companies and agroindustry companies” (Ranquil technical worker, Santiago de Chile). Precarious public policy and the absent state have produced a scenario in which, while peasant family farmers consider water distribution unfair, many producers lack the resources to resist the threat to the availability of this resource: “Here we have no irrigation. We can produce once a year because we have to take advantage once it rains in April, May, and then we plant wheat, oats, corn, but we are in a state of poverty” (San Nicolás agroecological producer). This defenselessness, part of the pauperization of the peasantry (Crispi, 1981), is the result of the appropriation of common goods by agribusiness with the support of the state and the constitution. A study carried out by the Office of Agricultural Studies and Policies (ODEPA, 2016) states that rural inequality in the Biobío region is mainly linked to limited availability of and access to water and irrigation resources due to the problematic legal framework (president of the Diguillín Peasants’ Association):

Half of the Diguillín Association’s producers do not have water or have a well but do not have it registered . . . which often excludes them from being able to apply for state projects they could take advantage of to modernize their irrigation systems. . . . [Registering} is so expensive. . . . Maybe this is so that the small farmer cannot register the well. Why is it so expensive? . . . I see a bad intention in this situation.

The agency proposes comprehensive management of the resource that includes a transfer of knowledge and environmental education. This does not, however, include information on the damage to water resources of forestry agribusiness (Torres-Salinas et al., 2016) and the commercial logic that the current water code has established.

The Future

The projections for the future that come from the different sectors of peasant family farming show common concerns that are fundamentally related to the fear of abandonment of the countryside. All the people interviewed said that there were no opportunities for the younger members of their families. There was also a shared awareness of a need for rural empowerment, including the revalorization of cultural patterns that support quietness, healthier habits, and less stress. The president of the Diguillín Peasants’ Association said, “On one hand I bet on agribusiness. On the other I bet that the youngest need bigger opportunities to develop in the cultural field,” and an agroecological producer from San Nicolás said, “I wish that the younger ones would stay in the countryside and study agroecology. I wish that there would be an institute here, something that would teach the kids that they do not have to migrate. In the future, I see our commune with a lot of agroecology . . . with volume, being many.”

In addition to agribusiness and agroecology, there is a new actor that is gaining importance: young peasants who are rejecting migration and pursuing a reconnection with nature and agriculture.⁹ At the same time, Ranquil recognizes another sector of society linked to the agricultural world as important to the debate on the future of the countryside (Ranquil leader from Bustamante):

When the struggle for land expands, seasonal workers will be the main actors, they will have to create an alliance with the sons of the peasants and peasants who maintain their culture, because there is a generation of seasonal agricultural workers who will end their work lives with nothing. I believe that there is going to be a debate on property. There has to be. Then there is going to be a return. That is a debate that is going to have to occur at some point—the good-living debate.

Conclusion

The above synthesis of the problematics that emerged from the discourses we collected during our fieldwork can help increase our understanding of the current heterogeneity of peasant family farming. Each farming style has its own orientation in the controversy between alternatives-to-development and alternative-development approaches. Policies that promote agriculture and organic certification have encouraged elitism within peasant family farming and deepened the differences between the two approaches. For example, the San Nicolás case is closer to the alernatives-to-development approach, while the rest of the cases show more contradictions because their capacities to adapt to market conditions are contingent. Still, there are no completely pure cases, and all are works in progress. Organic production is overcoming its dependence on having to generate better conditions. Following the logics of the export system is one of the main strategies of this sector. For small conventional producers the situation is different; their production is determined by the local demand for vegetables, and therefore they organize to achieve higher volumes of production. Meanwhile, Ranquil is trying to adapt to the principles of the international peasant movement related to food sovereignty and free seeds and taking on the difficult task of encouraging seasonal workers to demand better working conditions and state regulations to protect them.

Returning to and modifying the diagram of Figure 1, we can examine the theoretical tensions within and among our cases (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Theoretical tensions within and among our cases.

For the agroecological model of San Nicolás, it shows tensions toward the postdevelopment position within the alternative economy. The organic producers lean toward postdevelopment within the conventional economy, reflecting the conventionalization of organic farming. The position of the Diguillín small conventional producers incorporates elements of diverse economies because of its horizontal organization and cultural strength, but its imprint is still linked to the conventional economy and therefore oriented toward conventional development. Finally, Ranquil occupies a central position in the controversy. It includes elements of the conventional economy because of its seasonal work sectors, which depend on the structure of conventional production, but it also has a position on alternatives-to-development because of its political beliefs and opinions on the good-living debate.

With the open orientation of the horizontal and vertical vectors within the area of controversy, the logic of the diagram aims to illustrate the limitlessness of the opposites and their capacity for transformation. Given that transformation is part of the picture, the diagram should not be considered static. For example, while the alternatives-to-development circle is absorbed by the alternative-development, the center of resistance tends toward the center of hegemony, and in the reverse case the opposite will be true. The ability to move toward one center or another depends on the capacity of both theoretical extremes to become mediators of action in the construction of postdevelopment cosmologies of dematerialization, demercantilization, and decentralization or of conventional monocultures of maintenance, rectification, and transformation. This interpretative toolkit may be useful for considering heterogeneity as a principle that reveals contradictions and harmonious relations between actors with similar concerns.

We hope that we have made a contribution to the strengthening of the theory of postdevelopment as a broad, practical work in progress suitable for the understanding of the complex relations between economic and environmental issues and for revealing the cultural shape of the myth of development. Local peasant family farming communities have survived this myth throughout history, creating new strategies with concepts that were appropriated to varying degrees by the development framework. Nowadays agroecology is the strategy that local communities are defending as something of their own in an effort to establish a different constellation of economy and environment. If they aim to move toward an alternatives-to-development approach, local governments and conventional and organic peasant family farming sectors will be enriched by adopting this strategy.

Footnotes

Notes

Manuel Facundo Correa has a Master’s degree in social and development research from the Universidad de Concepción, Chile, and is an activist with the Unión de Trabajadores de la Tierra in Buenos Aires. Beatriz Eugenia Cid Aguayo has a Ph.D. from York University and is an associate professor of sociology at the Universidad de Concepción. The present research was part of the FONDECYT project No. 1160186, “Cartographies of Economic Heterogeneity: Case Studies in the Chilean Central-South.”

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