Environmental problems, farming and globalization in Latin America

Abstract

The globalization and the progressive liberalisation of farming markets world wide be an important push for the increase of productivity in Latin American countries. It will also bring about a greater international competitiveness of Latin America farming products, in consonance with a model of economic growth based on short-term profits. This tendency wil undoubtedly deepen the tense opposition between industrial farming, carried out by great local land owners as well as farms controlled by multinationals, and small farming, condemned to scarcity. The ever-increasing rural poverty, on the one hand, and the exploitation of land for the sake of productivity, on the other, cause degradation in the ecosystem and a serious ecological lack of balance, both of which worsen the critical problems inherited from the green revolution and from the subordinate role of Latin America in present-day capitalism. Although environmental awareness is growing among Latin America peasants, it makes no sense to defend environmental respect and the preservation of natural resources without simultaneously denouncing the logic of the liberal model, as there is an evident incompatibility between sustainable development and the capitalism mode of production.