Broadening and Deepening: Soy Expansions in a World-Historical Perspective

Autores/as

  • Ernst Langthaler

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2020v10i1.p244-277

Palabras clave:

Soybean, Soy Expansion, Commodity Frontier, Mode of Farming, China, USA, Brazil

Resumen

This article assesses the ongoing South American soy expansion from a world-historical perspective, comparing the case of Brazil with the cases of China and the USA. For this purpose, it applies the concept of commodity frontier, involving both external and internal modes of capitalist incorporation. The Chinese soy expansion (1900s–1930s) shows a predominant shift of the external frontier, associated with the peasant mode of farming. The US soy expansion (1930s–1970s) represents a predominant shift of the internal frontier, connected to the entrepreneurial mode of farming. The Brazilian soy expansion (1970s–2010s) reveals a flexible combination of extensive and intensive frontier shifts, corresponding with the capitalist mode of farming. These commodity booms were driven not only by nation states, capitalist enterprises and social movements, but also by the potentials and limitations of the soybean plant itself. Shifts of commodity frontiers often disrupted society and nature and, hence, were contested among diverse actors, both human and non-human.

Citas

Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Allen, Douglas W., and Dean Lueck. “Agricultural Contracts.” In Handbook of New Institutional Economics, edited by Claude Menard and Mary M. Shirley, 465–90. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.
Anderson, Joseph Leslie. Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945-1972. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.
Bair, Jennifer. Frontiers of Commodity Chain Research. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2008.
Baletti, Brenda. “Ordenamento Territorial: Neo-Developmentalism and the Struggle for Territory in the Lower Brazilian Amazon.” Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 573–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.664139.
Baraibar Norberg, Matilda. The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in Latin America. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Bois, Christine M. Du. “Social Context and Diet: Changing Soy Production and Consumption in the United States.” In The World of Soy, edited by Christine M. Du Bois, Chee-Beng Tan, and Sidney Mintz, 208–33. illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
———. The Story of Soy. London: Reaktion Books, 2018.
Bois, Christine M. Du, and Sidney Mintz. “Soy.” In Encyclopedia of Food and Culture: Volume 3, edited by Solomon H. Katz. New York: Scribner, 2000.
Bois, Christine M. Du, and Ivan Sergio Freire de Sousa. “Genetically Engineered Soy.” In The World of Soy, edited by Christine M. Du Bois, Chee-Beng Tan, and Sidney Mintz, 74–98. illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Cáceres, Daniel M. “Accumulation by Dispossession and Socio-Environmental Conflicts Caused by the Expansion of Agribusiness in Argentina.” Journal of Agrarian Change 15, no. 1 (2015): 116–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12057.
Carlson, Jon D. “Broadening and Deepening: Systemic Expansion, Incorporation and the Zone of Ignorance.” Journal of World-Systems Research 7, no. 2 (2001): 225–63. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2001.180.
Carstensen, Lisa. “‘Modern Slave Labor’ in Brazil at the Intersection of Production, Migration and Resistance Networks.” In On Coerced Labor: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery, edited by Marcel M. van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García, 267–90. BRILL, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004316386_013.
Chao, Kang. The Economic Development of Manchuria. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1983. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.19151.
Connor, David J., Robert S. Loomis, and Kenneth G. Cassman. Crop Ecology: Productivity and Management in Agricultural Systems. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Costa, Patricia Trindade Maranho, and International Labour Organisation (ILO)). Fighting Forced Labour: The Example of Brazil. Geneva: International Labour Office, 2009.
Deasy, G. F. “The Soya Bean in Manchuria.” Economic Geography 15, no. 3 (1939): 303–10. https://doi.org/10.2307/141549.
Food and Agriculture Organization. “Faostat,” 2020. http://www.fao.org/faostat.
Fischer, Karin, and Ernst Langthaler. “Soy Expansion and Countermovements in the Global South: A Polanyian Perspective.” In Capitalism in Transformation, edited by Roland Atzmüller, Brigitte Aulenbacher, Ulrich Brand, Fabienne Décieux, Karin Fischer, and Birgit Sauer, 212–27. Cheltenham, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019.
Garrett, Rachael D., and Lisa L. Rausch. “Green for Gold: Social and Ecological Tradeoffs Influencing the Sustainability of the Brazilian Soy Industry.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 43, no. 2 (2016): 461–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1010077.
Gottschang, Thomas, and Diana Lary. Swallows and Settlers: The Great Migration from North China to Manchuria. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Gottschang, Thomas R. “Economic Change, Disasters, and Migration: The Historical Case of Manchuria.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 35, no. 3 (1987): 461–90.
Hall, Thomas D. “Puzzles in the Comparative Study of Frontiers: Problems, Some Solutions, and Methodological Implications.” Journal of World-Systems Research 15, no. 1 (2009): 25–47. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2009.332.
Harnoncourt, Julia. Unfreie Arbeit: Trabalho Escravo in Der Brasilianischen Landwirtschaft. Wien: Promedia Verlagsges, 2018.
Haystead, Ladd, and Gilbert C. Fite. The Agricultural Regions of the United States. London: Methuen & Co., 1955.
Hopkins, Terence K., and Immanuel Wallerstein. “Commodity Chains in the World-Economy Prior to 1800.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 10, no. 1 (1986): 157–70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241052.
Hudson, John C. Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle-Western Agriculture. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.
IBGE. “Censo Agropecuário 2006: Brasil, Grandes Regiões e Unidades Da Federação.” Rio de Janeiro, 2006. https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/periodicos/51/agro_2006.pdf.
Imperial Maritime Customs (China). The Soya Bean of Manchuria. Shanghai: Inspector General of Customs, 1911.
Ioris, Antonio Augusto Rossotto. Agribusiness and the Neoliberal Food System in Brazil: Frontiers and Fissures of Agro-Neoliberalism. Abingdon, Oxon / New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
Klein, Herbert S., and Francisco Vidal Luna. Feeding the World: Brazil’s Transformation into a Modern Agricultural Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Komlosy, Andrea. “Kapitalismus Als Frontier: Die Verwandlung von Kulturen in Rohstofflieferanten.” In Rohstoffe Und Entwicklung. Aktuelle Auseinandersetzungen Im Historischen Kontext, edited by Karin Fischer, Johannes Jäger, and Lukas Schmidt. Wien: New academic press, 2016.
Langenberg, Johannes. Die Bedeutung Der Sojabohne in Der Weltwirtschaft. Pinneberg: Beig, 1929.
Langthaler, Ernst. “Gemüse Oder Ölfrucht? Die Weltkarriere Der Sojabohne Im 20. Jahrhundert.” In Umkämpftes Essen: Produktion, Handel Und Konsum von Lebensmitteln in Globalen Kontexten, edited by Cornelia Reiher and Sarah Ruth Sippel, 41–66. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666301704.41.
———. “The Soy Paradox: The Western Nutrition Transition Revisited, 1950-2010.” Global Environment 11, no. 1 (2018): 79–104. https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2018.110105.
Langthaler, Ernst, and Elke Schüßler. “Commodity Studies with Polanyi: Disembedding and Re-Embedding Labour and Land in Contemporary Capitalism.” Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Soziologie 44, no. 2 (2019): 209–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-019-00339-2.
Lapegna, Pablo. Soybeans and Power. Oxford University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190215132.001.0001.
McMichael, Philip. Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions. Rugby, Warwickshire, United Kingdom: Practical Action Publishing, 2013. https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780448794.
Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London, New York: Verso, 2015.
———. “Sugar and the Expansion of the Early Modern World-Economy: Commodity Frontiers, Ecological Transformation, and Industrialization.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 23, no. 3 (2000): 409–33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241510.
Ofstehage, Andrew. “Farming Is Easy, Becoming Brazilian Is Hard: North American Soy Farmers’ Social Values of Production, Work and Land in Soylandia.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 43, no. 2 (2016): 442–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.998651.
Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. London: Portobello Books, 2008.
Pérez, Mamerto, Timothy A. Wise, and Sergio Schlesinger. “The Promise and the Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization: Lessons from Latin America,” 2008.
Ploeg, Jan Douwe van der. The New Peasantries: Rural Development in Times of Globalization. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Prodöhl, Ines. “From Dinner to Dynamite: Fats and Oils in Wartime America.” Global Food History 2, no. 1 (2016): 31–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2016.1138366.
———. “Versatile and Cheap: A Global History of Soy in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Global History 8, no. 3 (2013): 461–82. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022813000375.
Reardon-Anderson, James. “Land Use and Society in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia during the Qing Dynasty.” Environmental History 5, no. 4 (2000): 503–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985584.
———. Reluctant Pioneers: China’s Expansion Northward, 1644-1937. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Robles, Wilder, and Henry Veltmeyer. The Politics of Agrarian Reform in Brazil: The Landless Rural Workers Movement (Social Movements and Transformation). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Roth, Matthew. Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2018.
Schönardie, Paulo Alfredo. Bäuerliche Landwirtschaft Im Süden Brasiliens: Historische, Theoretische Und Empirische Studie Zu Ernährungssouveränität, Modernisierung, Wiederbelebung Und Staatsfunktion. München: Oekom Verlag, 2013.
SILVA, Claiton Márcio da. “Entre Fênix e Ceres: A Grande Aceleração e a Fronteira Agrícola No Cerrado.” Varia Historia 34, no. 65 (2018): 409–44. https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-87752018000200006.
Sousa, Ivan Sergio Freire de, and Rita de Cássia Milagres Teixera Vieira. “Soybeans and Soyfoods in Brazil, with Notes on Argentina: Sketch of an Expanding World Commodity.” In The World of Soy, edited by Christine M. Du Bois, Chee-Beng Tan, and Sidney Mintz, 234–56. illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Sowa, Ivan Sergio Freire de, and Lawrence Busch. “Networks and Agricultural Development: The Case of Soybean Production and Consumption in Brazil.” Rural Sociology 63, no. 3 (1998): 349–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.1998.63.3.349.
Stewart, John R. “The Soya Bean and Manchuria.” Far Eastern Survey 5, no. 21 (1936): 221–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/3021359.
Sun, Kungtu C. The Economic Development of Manchuria in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. Harvard University Asia Center, 1969. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1tg5hhd.
Turner, Frederick J. The Frontier in American History. Norderstedt, Germany: BoD – Books on Demand, 2012.
Turzi, Mariano. The Political Economy of Agricultural Booms. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45946-2.
US Bureau of the Census. “Census of Agriculture 1964 – Iowa.” Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1967.
US Department of Agriculture. “National Agricultural Statistics Service,” 2019. http://www.nass.usda.gov.
Vorley, Bill. Food, Inc.: Corporate Concentration from Farm to Consumer. London: UK Food Group, 2003.
Whayne, Jeannie M. A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1996.
Willebald, Henry, and Javier Juambeltz. “Land Frontier Expansion in Settler Economies, 1830–1950: Was It a Ricardian Process?” In Agricultural Development in the World Periphery, edited by Vicente Pinilla and Henry Willebald, 439–66. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2_17.
Wisconsin Historical Society, International Harvester Company Film Collection, AC 741. “Soybeans for Farm and Industry.” Accessed October 1, 2019. http://archive.org/details/0914_Soybeans_for_Farm_and_Industry_00_21_44_29.
Wolff, David. “Bean There: Toward a Soy- Based History of North East Asia.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 99, no. 1 (2000): 241–52.

Descargas

Publicado

2020-05-06

Cómo citar

Langthaler, E. (2020). Broadening and Deepening: Soy Expansions in a World-Historical Perspective. Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana Y Caribeña (HALAC) Revista De La Solcha, 10(1), 244–277. https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2020v10i1.p244-277

Número

Sección

Artículos