Ninth IADE Debate Conference - Open Professorship of Agrarian Studies "Agr. Eng. Horacio Giberti" The Agri-food Issue

Abstract

Despite the Argentine agrarian sector's productive ability to feed several times the country's existing number of inhabitants, its structural issues and the current economic and agrarian policies have determined little growth in recent years. The strong devaluation of the Argentine peso since late 2015 up to date, its lack of compensation by way of collection of export agro-goods taxes, the opening for importation of primary goods and agri-food products, the total dis-regulation in internal and external trade chains, the concentration of the use of land - fundamentally among five or six export-oriented chains -, the impoverishment of regional economies, the weakening of smaller and intermediate agrarian production in all regions, among other issues, have been the axes of an economic policy for the agrarian sector, which, far from pulling along the rest of the economy, fostered the primarization of chains, reducing industrial added value, demand for workforce and further concentration of productive supply.