Fruit farming in crisis: an experience of selling to the State: a possible way out?

Abstract

The provinces of Neuquén and Río Negro (located in the northern Patagonia) share fruit farming as an important economic activity for their provinces, mainly based on the cultivation of pears and apples. In recent years, the processes of productive and capital concentration have accelerated and small and medium fruit production has become more subordinate to the agroindustrial complex. At the same time, a large number of farms, due to lack of profitability, migrate to other types of agricultural production or abandon agricultural production altogether. In 2020, the Federation of Fruit Producers of Río Negro and Neuquén promoted and organized, as an alternative marketing channel, a program to sell fruit from Río Negro to the State to be distributed in school canteens. In this paper, we analyze this commercialization experience, its development, scope and implementation and its impact on the participating agrarian subjects, the processes of economic concentration and commercial subordination.