Pergamino, Iowa and the wages in Pampas' agriculture: old myths and new realities

Abstract

This article addresses the wages issue in the soy-bean and corn agriculture of the contemporary pampas, comparing the magnitude of the labor remunerations with multiple variables of reference, and comparing the same variables in the soy-bean and corn agriculture zone of the United States. In one and the other side of the Americas, we compare the relative value of the wages in opposition to: 1) the unit of time in which they measure up; 2) the values of the total basic family needs of their countries; 3) the wages in other branches of their economies; and 4) the wages of the agricultural workers compared to one another, in the midwest of the USA and the pampas of Argentina. We conclude that remunerations to labor in the national core of the agribusiness, being the highests of their branch, are low in relation to the basic needs of the employees and compared to other economic sectors; they are below their equivalents in the U.S. in all the analyzed variables; and that the differential local rent finds among its components the overexploitation of local labor.