The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

88 Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
Agency for International Development (USAID). This new and convenient
wisdom of development agencies was an attempt to increase
peasant productivity, rather than institute land reform, as a solution
to rural poverty. Effectively, this meant uprooting the perennials and
replacing them with an expensive, risk-prone, mechanized, openfield
system of mono-cultivation of soya, beans, or corn. Around a
third of the peasant farmers accepted the loans to develop this new
system. Invariably, they were males because the financial and rural
extension services naturally gravitated to them and because women
were generally hostile to the idea. The result of the innovation has
been to increase astronomically peasant indebtedness, to virtually
eliminate the local subsistence base of plantains, and to increase the
rate of land acquisition by the plantations. Under the new system,
income is jeopardized because mono-cropping is susceptible to
plagues, winds, and flooding. Moreover, income is derived, if at all,
only once every four to six months. Capital inputs rise dramatically
because of the need for new varieties of seed, tractors, fertilizers,
pesticides, and increased labor inputs, which are necessary despite
the use of machinery. Cultivating in the new manner, peasants have
become employers of labor as never before, and the character of the
peasant class structure has evolved away from the kindred formation
into a stereotypical capital/labor structure. Rich peasants absorb
their neighbors' land, and the economic leveling that used to
occur on a rich peasant's death now happens only rarely, for they sell
or rent out their land to the plantations. Women have lost the supply
of traditional foods that they used to gather in the old-style plots to
sell in the towns and have become more dependent on men than
ever. They provide a ready labor pool for the labor contractors or for
the urban wealthy who use them as domestic servants.
The Articulation of Modes of Production
It certainly cannot be claimed that agribusiness development
in this food-rich area has improved the standard of living. Such
development has meant a growing rupture between agriculture and
nutrition. Whereas subsistence crops and peasant farming has withered,
the profits of the expanding sugar plantations are very high
(averaging around 40 percent between 1970 and 1974, expressed as
net income over costs [Fedesarrollo, 1976:340-346]). Yet, some 50
percent of children are said to be malnourished (Community Systems
Foundation, 1975). Moreover, it appears that the nutritional
balance that must be achieved by working adults is maintained at