Argentina’s Uneven Integration into Agrochemical Commodity Chains

Abstract

Since the beginning of the twenty-irst century, the rise of a generics market transformed the Global Pesticide Complex. New inequalities based on class, geopolitical, gender and racial positions have shaped the global division of labour, pesticide regulations and the exposure to chemical toxicity. In this context, our objective is to analyse the speciic way in which these transformations affect theuneven integration of the countries of the Global South. Taking Argentina as a case study, we triangulate quantitative and qualitative data to reconstruct how glyphosate was inserted in both agricultural and industrial production. We also highlight the conlictual nature of this insertion by pointing to the emergence of societal and non-human countermovements, and the way in which the industry has responded to them. We conclude that although there are important challenges to the negative impacts of the chemicalization of agriculture, the Global Pesticide Complex—which in Argentina includes both transnational and domestic actors—has turned these challenges into new accumulation opportunities. Crucial to this has been the development of new seed and pesticide packages, and the revival of older pesticide products.