Soybean entrepreneurs: Changes and continuities in the composition of entrepreneurial agriculture

Abstract

A fundamental feature of the new productive model that was consolidated in the last two decades, is the centrality acquired by capitalist enterprises. This involves a number of questions which should be considered insofar they are related to the analysis of the formation of these social fraction, the identification of the features that give them unity and their internal diversity. In this paper, we explore the importance and the role of land ownership in these sectors, both in terms of capital composition as of technical, productive and investment strategies they adopt. The issue is a controversial point related to the question about the type of players that have led soybean expansion, a debate that turns to the importance of land rent in the accumulation of entrepreneurial agriculture vis a vis technology, scientific knowledge and networking, through partnerships and agreements between different actors. The paper addresses these issues through the analysis of quantitative and qualitative information of a group of entrepreneurs from the Pampa region