The financial resources available for agricultural production
are channeled to economic and political power groups,
and not to small-scale producers, which are generally family
or traditional and indigenous farmers. The allocation of
resources to agriculture tends to diminish during this period
throughout the region, and especially in the poorest countries,
as a result of poor governance.
Medium-sized production systems, which are dependent
on government support, are efficient, but unable to
meet market demand. Consequently, they frequently lose
market shares to multinational production chains, which
export their products to the region. The performance of
these medium-sized systems deteriorates, as they need to
reduce their production costs more and more to keep their
market share.
3.4.2.2.4 Results of interaction among the systems
Because of a lack of proactive measures to mitigate the effects
of climate change, extensive tracts of land are increasingly
vulnerable to those effects, making investments more
risky. Agribusiness stakeholders wage an aggressive competition
to gain access to natural resources. Investments in agriculture
are dominated by transnational companies, which
in many cases receive support from governments. The result
is a volatile land and water market and the consolidation
of natural resources in a few hands. All of this leads to an
increase in income inequality.
Public resources for education decrease, which increases
the number of people without access to information and to
collective organizations to defend their interests. This creates
conditions that exacerbate income inequality and deepen social
inequality. The income gap expands in some countries
and remains stable in others, with an eventual improvement
resulting from the delivery of resources, in the form of land
titles for small farmers, for instance. In this way, an attempt
is made to attenuate the heavy migration from rural areas
to cities and other countries, which grew in the course of the
previous period.
As a rule, for a growing number of persons, access to
health, employment, education and food security becomes
more difficult. A segment of persons employed by the major
corporations is created, as compared with persons who
work for national organizations, the government, or independently.
The middle class loses its status, since it becomes
more impoverished. The situation of social disaggregation,
violence, and insecurity worsens considerably.
Although the bromatological quality of foods accessible
to the urban poor is maintained by the standards of the
previous period, the quantity of food for the poor in large
urban centers decreases, mainly for the following reasons:
(1) the number of urban poor is on the rise, as a result of
the lack of opportunities and jobs; and (2) there is a strong
internal migration from rural areas to cities. The wealthiest
countries, even in LAC, institute drastic measures to contain
this migratory movement.
The resilience22 of ecosystems diminishes considerably,
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22 Resilience is the capacity of a socio-environmental system
to absorb disruptions, deal with changes, and still essentially
maintain the same function and structure. Resilience depends
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especially in poor countries. In these countries, natural resources
are exploited virtually without restrictions. There
is no capacity to adopt measures to recover degraded land
or to mitigate and adapt to climate change, which is not a
priority for the governments.
3.4.3 Life as it is
3.4.3.1 2007-2015
3.4.3.1.1 Context of the AKST systems and agricultural
production
Trade barriers are used by developed countries as a mechanism
to defend the competitiveness of their agricultural
products. Minor victories in reducing barriers by agricultural
commodity-producing countries are offset by new social
or environmental barriers.
The LAC countries already established on commodity
markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,
Mexico, etc.) try to gain access to more dynamic markets
(United States, China, India) and the market for differentiated
products. However, these countries still cannot compete
on markets for differentiated agricultural products, because
of their increasingly limited capacity to invest in technological
innovation for agricultural production systems. These
countries continue to export commodities and diversify the
portfolio of products by including biofuels, such as alcohol
and biodiesel.
Consumers in the richer countries both within and outside
the region demand more and more quality, safety, functional
properties, and environmentally friendly production
methods for food and nonfood products, but they are not
yet prepared to pay the cost associated with these demands.
There are market openings for some differentiated products,
such as products of the Amazon jungles, or the Chaco Paraguayo,
or the salt desert of Bolivia, or from Patagonia. The
internal LAC markets primarily consist of consumers with
few resources, who demand low-priced foods and of niches
for high-income consumers, with their demand for differentiated
products.
In most of the region, there is an increase in either the
frequency or the severity of agricultural diseases and pests,
as a result of the lack of incentives to use good management
practices in production systems and the lack of a national
governmental structure with the capacity to implement regional
cooperation to prevent and mitigate the impacts of
new epidemics and losses in biodiversity.
In some parts of the region, there are huge changes in
the pattern of land use, such as large tracts of monocultures
of oleaginous crops and sugar cane for production of
biofuels that lend themselves to the manifestation of new
epidemics.
The temperature is rising at the rate of 0.22°C-0.24°C
per decade, and the frequency of extreme phenomena is
growing. There are relevant but highly variable effects on
agriculture and the systems in the region, especially as a result
of the frequency with which these phenomena affect
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on the variability and flexibility of the system (Carpenter et
al., 2005).
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