Presentation short abstract

Drawing on work in Argentina, we unpack the process of smallholder displacement due to the expansion of commodity agriculture. Our analysis invites reflection on the temporality of rural displacement and on the ‘forced' versus ‘voluntary’ nature of families’ relocation towards urbanizing centers.

Presentation long abstract

Today, about half of the planet's habitable area has been converted to crop- and pastureland. As this agricultural footprint continues to grow, understanding how the presence of people gives way to that of crops is urgent. In this paper, we unpack the process of smallholder displacement due to the expansion of commodity agriculture. Our analysis draws on qualitative fieldwork in the Argentine Chaco, where large-scale soy and cattle operations are advancing over forest. We find that the enclosure of resources by agribusiness is often brought to term when communities experience a shock—such as a legal defeat or the death of an elderly leader—that leads to an internal race to sell land. This feedback cycle, triggered by a single event but enabled by the build-up of constraints over time, leads to a relatively sudden dissolution of rural communities. What this case draws attention to, then, is the pacing of displacement: how it is slow until sometimes it is not. It is in these final, accelerated moments of community dissolution that land is made available for commodity production, underscoring the importance of examining how people hold on to land and what finally causes them to let it go.

By taking as point of departure the agency of rural families and by examining the dynamics happening both at sites of departure and of arrival, our analysis provokes reflection on the temporality of displacement as well as on the ‘forced' versus ‘voluntary’ nature of rural smallholders’ relocation towards urbanizing centers due to land grabbing.