COMMODITY BOOMS, FRONTIER DYNAMICS, AND PETTY CAPITALIST FARM ENTERPRISE IN THE SOUTHERN CONE AGRO-EXPORT COMPLEX: ARGENTINA AND PARAGUAY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This dissertation examines the conditions shaping the persistence and transformation of petty commodity production in capital-intensive agriculture characterized by growing agribusiness concentration. Drawing on Marxist agrarian political economy, it develops a comparative historical analysis of the Pampas and central Chaco in Argentina and southeastern Paraguay within the Southern Cone’s soybean agro-export complex. The research combines 77 semi-structured interviews and field observations from 2021–2022 with documentary analysis and census, cadastral, and trade data. Organized around land, labour, and capital, it traces how commodity booms and agricultural frontier expansion have shaped agrarian structures since the colonial period. The findings show that concentration within value chains can coexist with differentiated units of farm production. Where mechanisms exist to secure supplies from dispersed producers, agribusiness firms may benefit from offloading substantial cultivation risks. Historically constituted property relations, differential ground rent, and state mediation shape farm viability, while cooperatives and machinery contracting facilitate access to technology, markets, and economies of scale. These conditions have favoured the persistence of technologically advanced petty commodity production in the Pampas and parts of eastern Paraguay, while pressures toward concentration and displacement are especially pronounced in Argentina’s Chaco. Such persistence nevertheless coexists with continual competitive attrition, pressures for technical reorganization, and, in some cases, differentiation into petty capitalist farm enterprises. The dissertation explains the conditional viability of petty commodity production, distinguishing its continuity as a distinct form from the survival of individual enterprises. It also relates these material conditions to producers’ ideological orientations and associational life, examining their political implications.