rural transformation · required citation: trivelli.c and berdegué. j.a, 2019. rural...
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Rural transformation Looking towards the future of Latin America and the Caribbean
Document nº 1
Food, Agriculture and rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean 2030/
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsSantiago, 2019
Carolina Trivelli and Julio A. Berdegué
Rural transformation Looking towards the future of Latin America and the Caribbean
Food, agriculture and rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean 2030/
Document nº 1
Required citation:Trivelli.C and Berdegué. J.A, 2019. Rural transformation. Looking towards the future of Latin America and the Caribbean. 2030 - Food, agriculture and rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean, No. 1. Santiago. FAO. 76 p.Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
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© FAO, 2019
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Contents
About this document.......................................................................................................................4
1. No sustainable development without rural development......................................................5
2. Current situation in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean.......................................8
2.1. Population and social diversity........................................................................................8
2.2. Backwardness, inequality and exclusion..............................................................................10
2.3. The contribution of rural areas to the regional economy and the global food supply.......17
2.4. Ecosystems, natural resources and climate change.....................................................23
3. Drivers of change.....................................................................................................................27
3.1. Climate change..................................................................................................................28
3.2. Food demand.....................................................................................................................30
3.3. Technological change.........................................................................................................33
4. A call to action: Rural transformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.......36
4.1. Social inclusion: Basic conditions for citizens to contribute to rural development..............38
4.2. Transforming the rural economy........................................................................................40
4.3. Redefining the relationship with natural resources and ecosystems.................................44
5. An institutional framework for rural transformation............................................................46
5.1. Social valorization of rural areas....................................................................................48
5.2. Agri-food sector institutions for the 21st century.........................................................49
5.3. Public spending as an institutional issue.....................................................................50
5.4. Territorial strategies and policies.....................................................................................55
5.5. Governance............................................................................................56
6. Conclusion: Eight challenges for rural transformation...........................................................58
References................................................................................................................65
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About this document
The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global agreement based on a profoundly renewed sense of the development of humanity and the planet. Agriculture, food systems and rural development can play a central role in achieving this Agenda and in realizing this new vision of development, as long as they are constantly renewed.
Between October 2018 and June 2019, the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Carib-bean, with the collaboration of the Institute of Peruvian Studies, undertook a process of reflection on the future of agriculture, food systems and rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. It was a frank and open dialogue that involved a hundred experts from a score of nationalities, who contributed ideas and evidence from the perspectives of the public sector, the private sector, civil society, academia, research centers, international organizations and the FAO itself. All the partici-pants were asked to think about the future, since the objective is to revitalize and renew the debate by bringing in new perspectives.
The first result of this dialogue is a series of 33 documents (Appendix 1) that address different dimensions of agriculture, food systems and rural development. This first document of the series draws on all of these reports to analyze rural transformation and the future of Latin America and the Caribbean, within the framework of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. The intention of this doc-ument is not to offer conclusions and final recommendations, but to propose ideas and discuss the dilemmas facing the region to stimulate dialogue that is needed to rise to the challenge of the SDGs.
The following people have participated in this process so far, to whom we express our gratitude: Adoniram Sanches, Adrián Rodríguez, Alain de Janvry, Alberto Broch, Alejandro Flores-Nava, Ál-varo Ramos, Ana María Ibáñez, Ana María Loboguerrero, André Saramago, Andrew Jarvis, Ángela Penagos, Anthony Bebbington, Anton Eitzinger, Arilson Favareto, Arnoldo do Campos, Benjamin Davis, Carlos Furche, Carlos Gonzalez, Carlos Pomareda, Carmine Paolo de Salvo, Carolina Trivel-li, Catalina Ivanovic, Catia Grisa, Claudia Brito, Claudia Ospina, Daniel Rico, David Torres, Deissy Martínez-Barón, Eduardo Ramírez, Eduardo Trigo, Eric Sabourin, Erwan Sachet, Esteban Pérez, Estelle Jacq, Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla, Eve Crowley, Fernando Soto, Gustavo Gordillo, Hivy Ortíz, Hugo Beteta, Hugo Ñopo, Ignacia Fernández, Ignacia Holmes, Ileana Gómez, Isidro Soloaga, Iván Lanegra, Jaime Tarapues, Javier Escobal, Javier Torres, Jean Francois Le Coq, Jefferson Valencia, Joao Intin I, John Scott, John Wilkinson, Jorge Fonseca, José Antonio Ocampo, José Graziano da Silva, Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight, Juan García, Julián Ramírez-Villegas, Julio Berdegué, Lauren Phillips, Leidi Sierra, Lorna Born, Luiz Beduschi, Marcela Quintero , Marco Rendón, Marco Sánchez Can-tillo, Mariana Escobar, Martín Piñeiro, Martine Dirven, Mauricio Mirelles, Maya Takagi, Mayesse Da Silva, Michael Albertus, Monica Rodrigues, Natalia Winder, Norma Correa, Octavio Sotomay-or, Pablo Aguirre Hörmman, Pablo Chauvet, Pablo Elverdin, Pablo Faret, Paul Wander, Paula Paz, Ricardo Fort, Ricardo Rapallo, Robert Hofstede, Rodrigo Rivera, Ruben Echevarría, Rui Benfica, Sandra Durango, Sara Gamage, Sergio Schneider, Silvia Saravia-Matus, Steve Prager, Tomás Rosada and Vera Salazar.
Special thanks to Silvia Saravia-Matus, Vera Salazar and Karina Carrasco, without whom this docu-ment would not have been possible.
The views and opinions expressed in this document belong solely to the authors and do not neces-sarily reflect the views of their respective institutions.
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On May 23, 2007, we crossed the demographic threshold at which more than half of the pop-ulation of the planet lived in urban areas. An even greater proportion works in activities other than agriculture.1 Although hunger still severely threatens the lives of 821 million people (FAO et al. 2018), the vast majority of the world’s population takes for granted that we will have at least some food on the table everyday. Many believe that the specter of devastating famines is history and, consequently, some people may think, mistakenly, that rural areas and communities are not important for our well-being and that of our children. But this is not so.
We affirm that the sustainable development of the inhabitants of this planet - and of the planet itself - is interdependent with the development of the rural sector, of its people and societies, of its livelihoods and economy, and of its ecosystems and natural resources. If we accept that the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the greatest global consensus on the meaning of development, we cannot separate rural development from the goals to “eliminate poverty and hunger (SDGs 1 and 2), improve the health and education of citizens (SDGs 3 and 4), promote gender equality (SDG 5), improve the use and access to water (SDG 6), promote clean energy (SDG 7), generate decent employment and growth (SDG 8), innovate in productive processes and infrastructure (SDG 9), reduce inequality (SDG 10), build sustain-able cities (SDG 11), achieve sustainable production and consumption (SDG 12), fight climate change (SDG 13), conserve marine and terrestrial ecosystems (SDGs 14 and 15), promote peace (SDG 16) and international cooperation for development (SDG 17)” (Saravia-Matus and Agu-irre, 2019). Of the 169 targets established to achieve the SDGs, 132 (78 percent) are at least partly related to the rural sector, and one in five are exclusively or mainly rural (see Figure 1).2 It is worth noting that, in addition to seeing the SDGs as independent goals, they can also be con-sidered together as an attempt to propose another way of looking at development, emphasizing social, environmental and justice dimensions, as opposed to the models that equate economic growth with development (Bebbington 2019). Thus, the future of urban areas is interdependent with the future of rural areas. To ignore rural development is to deny the development of the planet as a whole.
1 In this document, unless otherwise indicated, the term “agriculture” includes crop production, livestock, fisheries and forestry activities.
2 The following link contains the detail of the 196 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/Global percent20Indicator percent20Framework_A.RES.71.313 per-cent20Annex.pdf
1. No sustainable development without rural development
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Figure 1. The weight of the rural sector in the 169 targets of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
Source: FAO (2018a)
In this document we present a set of ideas aimed at achieving rural development consistent with that proposed in the SDGs. These proposals, and much of the data and evidence, are based on a strategic reflection dialogue organized by the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), which was summarized in 32 documents produced by 58 experts at the highest level (see Appendix 1), and on which this document is based.
Our focus is on Latin America and the Caribbean, but we know that much of what happens or does not happen in the rural areas of our region has global causes and consequences. Therefore, this document has made an effort to contextualize the relevant issues - such as agriculture, food systems3 and the rural sector4, among others - and thus obtain a comprehensive vision of the ways of addressing regional challenges in a changing socio-economic and political scenario.
The rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean are relevant for development not only because they continue to be the home of a significant part of the world’s population, but also because of their many contributions in different sectors, ranging from food production, energy, environ-mental services, culture and identity, to the landscapes and natural resources such as water that are vital for life on the planet. As the rural sector lags behind in opportunities for development, it also generates negative externalities for the region, such as the proliferation of illegal economies, greater insecurity and violence, and the destruction of environmental resources.
3 Defined by FAO (2018b) as the full range of actors and related activities in the production, stockpiling, transformation, processing, trade, distribution and consumption of food and waste products derived from agriculture, forestry or fisheries.
4 The set of rural and rural-urban territories of the region, including the societies that inhabit them and the ecosystems and natural resources located there.
ODS 1: End poverty 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.a 1.bODS 2: Zero hunger 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.a 2.b 2.cODS 3: Health and well-being 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3a 3.b 3.c 3.dODS 4: Quality education 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.a 4.b 4.cODS 5: Gender equality 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.a 5.b 5.cODS 6: Water and sanitation 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.a 6.bODS 7: Energy 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.a 7.bODS 8: Decent work and growth 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.a 8.bODS 9: Industry, innovation, infrastructure 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.a 9.b 9.cODS 10: Reduce inequalities 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.a 10.b 10.cODS 11: Sustainable cities 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.a 11.b 11.cODS 12: Sustainable consumption and production 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8 12.a 12.b 12.cODS 13: Combat climate change 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.a 13.bODS 14: Marine resources 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.a 14.b 14.cODS 15: Terrestrial ecosystems 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7 15.8 15.9 15.a 15.b 15.cODS 16: Inclusive and peaceful societies 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 16.8 16.9 16.10 16.a 16.bODS 17: Partnership for Sustainable Development 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 17.7 17.8 17.9 17.1 17.11 17.12 17.13
17.14 17.15 17.16 17.17 17.18 17.19
The target is exclusively rural (achieved in or from rural areas)The target is extremely relevant in/for rural areasThe target has medium or low relevance in rural areas
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We believe that without rural development there will be no sustainable development in Lat-in America and the Caribbean. Although we have mentioned this on multiple occasions, it is worth mentioning again: rural development is a multidimensional issue whose effects far exceed the limits of the sector. Nevertheless, we recognize that the situation of the rural population of Latin America and the Caribbean clearly reflects an insufficient balance to achieve the objectives that the global community of nations considers essential to be able to call our societies devel-oped. In order to achieve the SDGs, it is not enough to make adjustments in the margin to the dynamics of rural development, but we must endeavour to deepen the structural transformation of the rural sector, strengthening and reforming its economic, social and environmental aspects. Agriculture, food systems and rural areas are part of the solution to the limited development of the region and represent an enormous opportunity that should not be missed. Rural transforma-tion is inevitable — we are already experiencing the effects of three enormous drivers of change: the environment, food systems and technology. There is nowhere to hide. The only dilemma is whether we will be able to take advantage of the coming changes so that the transformation brings us closer to development and the achievement of the SDGs.
To have a decisive impact on the nature and direction of rural transformation, we must consider four objectives that are ambitious, complex and uncertain, but also, in our opinion, essential. First, to ensure a minimum level of well-being and opportunities for all inhabitants of rural areas of the region; second, to transform the rural economy; third, to build a relationship with the en-vironment that is diametrically different from that of previous centuries, and fourth, to make this possible, it is essential to forge a new governance of the rural sector, which means an institutional architecture reconditioned to the challenges of the present.
It would be irresponsible on the part of those involved in this agenda to turn a blind eye to the fact that the scope of the transformations under way in rural areas will inevitably bring political, social and institutional conflicts and disputes regarding the orientation and magnitude of the strategies employed. Ensuring that this process occurs according to civilized and democratic val-ues and norms, however, is not something that can be taken for granted in a region that suffers from so much inequality.
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2. Current situation in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean
In this section, evidence is provided to measure the relative importance of agriculture, food sys-tems and the rural sector in the context of the challenges facing Latin American and Caribbean societies. It also takes stock of some of the main structural problems that limit agricultural, food and rural development and, with it, that of the region as a whole.
As mentioned in the introduction, the rural sector is important for development, as it contributes valuable resources, products and capacities that contribute to the development of countries, the region and the world. There are also positive and negative environmental externalities in rural ar-eas that are key to the sustainability of the planet and must be taken into account. Finally, in rural areas we also find problems that affect our countries, such as insecurity, high levels of violence or the development of illegal activities with high impact on the lives of people in Latin America and the Caribbean.
2.1 Population and social diversity
The rural population in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the official census or administrative definitions of each country, will reach 125 million inhabitants by 2020, which represents 19 percent of the total population of the region (UN 2018). According to Dirven (2019), this proportion will to fall to an estimated 16 percent of the total population by 2030. From a sub-regional perspective, by 2020 the rural population will represent 18.5 percent of the total population of Latin America and 31.4 percent of the population of the Caribbean, includ-ing Anglo and Francophone countries (Dirven 2019).
The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean tend to define the rural sector negatively as everything that is not urban, which is based on census or administrative criteria agreed in the re-gion in the population censuses of 1960 (ECLAC 2011; Sabalain 2011, cited by Dirven 2019).5 However, some agencies, including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Develop-ment (OECD), and countries use broader and more sophisticated definitions, which better re-flect the characteristics of the population that are relevant to rural development. These definitions incorporate notions such as “dispersed rural areas”, “concentrated rural areas” and
5 Although the census definition of the rural sector is insufficient, Dirven (2019) recommends using it as a foundation and encouraging the use of “double accounting”, where this definition is supplemented with information at the country, provincial and municipal levels (and for some indicators, even at the local level) on population density; population distribution; distance to towns and cities of a certain size; number and percentage of the economically active population in agriculture; land in nature reserves and other land uses; percentage of the population with unsatisfied basic needs; and the proportion of the low-income population living below the poverty and indigence line.
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“urban periphery”, among others, that capture the existence of a slope between the urban and the rural, or rural-urban, leaving aside the dichotomy of census or administrative definitions.6
For example, the definition of rural areas adopted by Colombia’s Mission for Rural Trans-formation, led by the National Planning Department (DNP), means the rural population reached 30.4 percent in 2014, well above the 23.7 percent reported using the administrative definition.7 Similarly, Chile, in its National Rural Development Policy (ODEPA 2014), de-fines rural territories as those generated by the dynamics of interrelationships between people, economic activities and natural resources, characterized by a population density lower than 150 (inhabitants per km2) and with a maximum population of 50 000, with the community as the main organizational unit.8 According to this definition, the rural population in Chile represents 26.8 percent of the total population, which is double the 13 percent according to the census estimate of the rural population (ODEPA 2014, 5).
At the regional level, applying the OECD definition, the rural population is practically dou-ble the official estimate.9 Using this definition, De Ferranti et al. (2005) estimated that in 2001 the rural population was 219 million, or 42 percent of the total population, while the official rural population -reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) - was approximately 125 million people, or 24 percent of the popula-tion of the region (De Ferranti et al. 2005, 9).
For its part, the Population Division (CELADE) of ECLAC usually uses the population of population centers with less than 20,000 inhabitants to estimate what is termed as “the rest” - rural and semi-rural - seeking to tie the definition to units with existing census information, based on the work of Rodríguez Vignoli (2017). For example, in Peru the information from the last census (2017) reveals that, although the population residing in population centers of less than 2,000 inhabitants represents 23.8 percent of the total population, the population living in population centers of less than 20,000 inhabitants represents 35.8 percent (INEI 2017). Dirven (2019) points out that localities of less than 2 000 inhabitants have been losing relative impor-tance, while localities of between 2 000 and 20 000 inhabitants have been increasing.
A study by the Latin American Center for Rural Development (RIMISP) for Chile, Colombia and Mexico, defines urban-rural territories as spaces in which small or medium-sized cities are functionally linked to their rural environment. In these territories, the urban capitals have be-tween 15 000 and 350 000 inhabitants (upper limit of 300 000 in Chile, 380 000 in Mexico and 400 000 in Colombia). The study also found that 21 percent of the population in Co-lombia lives in rural areas, 8.1percent in Chile and 14 percent in Mexico, while in urban-rural territories, the figure rises to 33 percent of the population in Colombia, 39 percent in Chile and 38 percent in Mexico (Cazuffi et al. 2017). 6 To illustrate the consequences of using these definitions, Veiga (2002) for example spoke of “imaginary cities,” artificial-
ly created by arbitrary statistical definitions to support the notion of a more urbanized Brazil than it is in reality.
7 Of the total rural population, 14 percent live in cities, 23 percent in intermediate municipalities of between 25 000 and 100 000 inhabitants, 37 percent in municipalities with capitals of less than 25 000 inhabitants and low population density (between 10 and 100 inhabitants per km2) and 25 percent in dispersed rural areas (Ocampo 2015).
8 Equivalent to the municipalities or districts of other countries.
9 The definition of rural areas used by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) includes the population living in population centers with a population density of less than 150 inhabitants per km2 and distance of more than one hour of travel to cities of 100 000 inhabitants or more.
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Finally, using information from the World Urbanization Prospects (UN 2018b), if it is assumed that a significant percentage of the population (60 percent) living in cities of less than 300 000 inhabitants is part of the rural-urban segment, the rural population combined with the rural-ur-ban population could double the population linked to rural areas from 125 million to 256 mil-lion people, which is equivalent to 39.3 percent of the total population of the region.10
The rural population of the region is not only relevant because of its magnitude but also because of its composition. The rural population (according to the official definition) faces, like the rest of the regional population, a process of aging. According to information from CELADE (2017) for 20 countries in the region, the population over 65 who live in rural areas exceeded 9.8 million in 2018, which will rise to more than 13.5 million by 2030; while the population of young people (between 15 and 24 years of age), which now totals 21 million, will decrease by 14 percent to 18 million by 2030. Changes in age composition require the development of proposals that promote an attractive rural life with opportunities for young people, and dignity for older adults.11
In addition, in the rural territories of the region there are more than 46 million inhabitants of Afro or indigenous descent, which represent just under 40 percent of the total rural pop-ulation (Angulo et al. 2018). In countries such as Brazil, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala and Paraguay, these groups represent more than half of the rural popula-tion (Yancari 2019), and have a presence in, and in many cases are owners of, large tracts of territory and significant natural resources; they also make an important contribution to the cultural identity of rural areas. The presence of indigenous and Afro-descendant populations implies community forms of organization that are key to the governance of the rural sector and effective strategies for the use and sustainability of their resources that should be shared and promoted.12
2.2 Backwardness, inequality and exclusion
The rural population faces significant lags in its development indicators with respect to the population living in more urbanized environments (and even in rural-urban territories). Ru-ral areas lag behind in multiple aspects leading to a scenario with multiple and interconnected gaps. These social gaps are not static; on the contrary, they tend to reproduce and transmit from one generation to another, as a result of the interaction of the multiple social, economic and territorial inequalities present in the rural environment. The permanent backwardness of these areas in development indicators is the manifestation of territorial poverty and inequality traps and low social mobility (Bebbington et al. 2016).
10 The calculation uses the rural and urban population reported for 2018, and the participation of urban pop-ulation in cities of less than 300 000 inhabitants (as of 2015). With this information, the rural population reported for Latin America and the Caribbean is 126 million (19 percent), and the rural-urban population (60 percent of the population in cities with less than 300 000 inhabitants) of 130 million. The result of this op-eration is that the overall population of the rural sector in the region is 256 million. Note that this calculation gives a result that is quite similar to that predicted by the much more elaborate work of De Ferranti et al. (2005).
11 Although the Aging Index (adults over 65 as a percentage of children under 15 years of age) is higher in urban areas than in rural areas (49 percent vs. 38 percent for 2017), it is growing steadily in urban and rural areas. According to the projections of CELADE (2017), by 2030 there will be 82 adults over 65 for every 100 children in urban areas of Latin America and the Caribbean and 64 in rural areas.
12 More than 826 groups of indigenous peoples have been recorded in the region (Mireles 2019).
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Today, the rural poverty rate, which registered significant reductions between 2002 and 2014, is no longer falling - it is even growing in some countries of the region - and remains unac-ceptably high.13 In 2017, in Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 56 million people - 46.5 percent of the rural population - faced a situation of monetary poverty, and 20.5 percent of extreme poverty (ECLAC 2019) (see Figure 2).14 Poverty and extreme poverty rates are double and triple, respectively, the rates in urban areas. As a result, the end of poverty (SDG 1) is not visible on the horizon for a large part of the rural population.
Although there were substantial reductions in rural poverty, only five countries (of the 16 with available information) managed to lower the incidence of poverty at a rate of more than 1.5 percentage points per year, and only Chile and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay have achieved rural poverty rates below two digits (see Figure 3).15
Figure 2. Evolution of rural poverty, extreme rural poverty, and GDP per capita in Latin America
Source: ECLAC
13 The reduction of rural poverty occurred during the years of high economic growth in the region. Figure 2 includes the evolution of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita to show how economic growth has changed.
14 Figures adjusted according to the new methodology of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) published in January 2019 and used in the Social Panorama of Latin America 2018.
15 The 16 countries of the region with information available on rural poverty (using the new ECLAC methodol-ogy), between the beginning of 2000 and 2017, reduced their rural poverty rate by an average 1.1 percent-age points per year. Five countries (the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile) reduced rural poverty rates by more than 1.5 times the average for the region; Chile had the highest rate of reduction in rural poverty.
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Evolución de la pobreza rural, pobreza extrema rural y PBI per cápita de América Latina
Rural Poverty (ma) Rural Poverty (nm) Extreme rural poverty (ma) Extreme poverty (nm) GDP per capita
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Figure 3. Change in the poverty rate, by country
Source: ECLAC
Although, as expected, multidimensional measurements of rural poverty show higher levels of poverty with respect to monetary poverty, they also show a downward trend (Angulo et al. 2018, based on the work of Santos et al. 2015). There are countries that have made important progress in reducing monetary poverty, but not multidimensional poverty (such as Brazil and Peru, for example), while others have managed to lower both types of poverty (such as the Eastern Republic of Uruguay) (Trivelli 2019).16
There is a consensus on the need to work with different poverty measures to adequately iden-tify the best ways to face the challenge of eliminating it. Multidimensional and standardized monetary measures, and certain measures for specific groups or areas, complemented by qual-itative studies, are the minimum basis of information required to understand the dynamics of poverty. 17
16 Although there are multidimensional measurements of rural poverty, these tend to be adapted from pro-posed measures for urban areas, which is why it is necessary to generate a multidimensional measure that captures the specific characteristics of rural poverty.
17 In 2018, the World Bank published a flagship report on the subject (WB 2018).
85.2%
57.1%55.5%
31.6%
48.4%
9.4%
67.6%
43.1%
38.0%
20.8%
63.7%
33.0%
68.9%
52.2%
68.5%65.8%
72.4%
64.0%
75.3%
59.6%
76.4%
59.8%
45.7%
35.5%
56.2%
34.0%
68.4%
41.4%44.7%
34.9%
17.5%
1.6%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
200
2
2017
200
1
2017
200
3
2017
200
2
2017
200
0
2017
200
1
2017
200
0
2017
200
0
2014
200
1
2016
200
0
2016
200
1
2014
200
0
2017
200
1
2017
200
1
2017
200
0
2016
200
7
2017
Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru DominicanRepublic
Uruguay
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The sustained reduction in the incidence of rural poverty in the region between 2002 and 2014 is explained both by the period of high and sustained growth and the implementation of a set of social and sectorial policies, as well as greater investment in infrastructure in rural areas. As of 2016, there has been a stagnation, and even a reversal of the declining trend of rural poverty in some countries of the region, both because of lower rates of economic growth and because in several countries, although social spending did not decrease, it has stopped growing and with that the reach of many social programs, while in recent years there have been no innovations in poverty reduction strategies, which is a matter that urgently needs to be addressed (FAO 2018).
The rural indigenous and Afro-descendant population is overrepresented in rural poverty. Fig-ure 4 shows that the rural poverty rate for these groups is almost 10 percentage points higher than the rural poverty rate of the nine countries with significant presence of indigenous and afro-descendant populations (FAO 2018, 24). In countries such as the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru, more than 60 percent of the rural population living in poverty have indigenous or afro ancestry.18
Figure 4. Indigenous rural households living in situations of poverty and indigence in nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean
Source: FAO (2018a).
18 According to data reported by Yancari (2019), based on the household surveys of eight countries in the region with a high presence of groups of indigenous or Afro-descendant descent, people of indigenous or Afro-descendant descent as a proportion of the total number of people living in poverty in rural areas is 75 percent in Brazil, 66 percent in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, 63 percent in Peru, 54 percent in Guatema-la, 46 percent in Ecuador and 96 percent in Paraguay.
Non-indigenous indigence Indigenous indigence Non-indigenous poverty Indigenous poverty
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In most countries of the region, the goal of eradicating poverty in rural areas is unlikely to be achieved by 2030, not only due to lower levels of economic growth in recent years, but also due to the prevalence of high levels of inequality. Benfica (2019) reports on progress in the region in terms of reducing inequality since 2000, despite the fact that Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be a region with high inequality.19
Poverty should be analyzed along with other dimensions to understand the complexity of rural backwardness (and its process of reproduction). The rural sector still faces challenges to guarantee adequate food systems for its population. In 2018, the number of undernourished people in Latin America and the Caribbean increased for the third consecutive year, reaching 39.3 million (FAO 2018).
Chronic rural child malnutrition, which in recent years has been falling in most countries of the region, continues to be higher in rural areas than in urban areas in virtually all countries, with the gap reaching about 20 percentage points in Peru and Guatemala (FAO 2018).20 This accounts for the substantial distance between the current situation and compliance with SDG 2.
Overweight and obesity represent the most widespread problem of malnutrition in the region, and are the main causes of death through chronic noncommunicable diseases. In the particular case of obesity, the literature shows that as countries increase their level of development, the highest prevalences are transferred to the population with lower incomes (FAO 2018) and this makes it difficult to achieve SDGs 2 and 3.21
It is estimated that the costs related to undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies worldwide represent between 2 and 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year (WB 2006, FAO 2013). If you add noncommunicable diseases associated with obesity, the cost of malnu-trition reaches 5 percent of GDP (FAO 2013).
Access to basic services and infrastructure is still limited for the rural population and the gap compared to urban areas is very high (Fort 2019). Connectivity and accessibility (roads, tele-communications, Internet) is limited, as is access to basic services (safe water, sanitation, elec-tricity) (Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019, Fort 2019).22 However, beyond the coverage (and gaps) of the different types of infrastructure, Fort (2019) points out that the challenge is to ensure the provision of a critical (minimum) amount of rural infrastructure, essential for the achievement SDGs 6 and 9, and even for SDG 1.23
19 Based on information from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for a sample of 102 countries (30 high-income countries, 72 low and middle-income countries) around 2005 the Gini index in the region was 0.484, practically seven points higher than the world average of 0.415. According to Izquierdo et al. (2018), despite the reduction in the Gini index in recent years, the average (simple) Gini outside the region was 0.319 (in the OECD) and 0.423 in Sub-Saharan Africa, while in Latin America and the Caribbean it was 0 467.
20 In the Dominican Republic, Barbados and Saint Lucia, chronic malnutrition is greater in urban areas than in rural areas (FAO 2018, 21).
21 Although the prevalence of overweight and obesity in rural areas is still lower than in urban areas, the gap is closing because these problems of malnutrition increase at a faster rate in rural areas (NCD-RisC 2019).
22 The provision of rural infrastructure has grown in almost all types of infrastructure and countries in the re-gion and rural-urban gaps, although still significant, have been reduced in the last 10 years (Fort 2019).
23 The urgent need to ensure a minimum infrastructure package has been highlighted in FAO (2018) as part
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Education and health in rural areas have shown significant increases in coverage, but have lower quality levels than those of urban areas (Scott 2019, OECD 2010, Fuica et al. 2014, cited by Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019). The gap between young people from 20 to 24 years of age with complete secondary education is more than 20 percentage points between urban and ru-ral areas (Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019).24 This gap is even more pronounced in the case of tertiary education (Scott 2019).
Ramos et al. (2012) and Scott (2019) indicate that the lower academic achievement of rural youth is mainly explained by the level of income and education of rural households; that is, by circumstances of the origin of new cohorts. Addressing the rural education deficit is ne-cessary to achieve SDG 4 and thus help rural youth to access employment and decent work (SDG 8).
In the case of health, the situation is similar. Despite the greater coverage of services recorded in recent years and their greater use (for example, thanks to the massification of cash transfer programs conditioned to the use of health services), the infant mortality rate, which must be reduced to achieve SDG 3, continues to be higher in those places with greater rural poverty.25
The majority of people living in poverty in rural areas face severe limitations in accessing eco-nomic opportunities beyond informal and low productivity jobs. Family farming, and some forms of non-farm rural employment, are ways of overcoming poverty when there are effec-tive opportunities to access factors of production, services and markets (Grisa and Sabourin 2019, Berdegué and Fuentealba 2011). Land is a key productive resource. Despite the significant redistributive processes that have been implemented – from land redistribution to market mechanisms and the allocation of land from the public sector to farmers – land ownership is still extremely concentrated.26 Currently, the political space to implement greater redistributions in favour of small-scale producers or resources is limited. Therefore, the challenge of reducing the inequality of the agrarian structure is to find distributive formulas that are compatible with the processes of political decision-making in democratic societies (Albertus 2019).
The expansion of non-farm rural employment options (NFRE) has increased the diversifica-tion of labour participation options and facilitates the participation of certain social segments in the workforce. However, in many rural areas these are also low productivity jobs. Around 60 percent of the rural population is occupied in primary sectors – mainly in the agriculture
of the strategy to return to the path of rural poverty reduction. For a discussion on the close relationship between rural infrastructure endowment and poverty reduction, see the Peruvian case (Fort 2014).
24 Saravia-Matus and Aguirre (2019) show that, based on information obtained from ECLACSTAT 2019, in 2014 40.1 percent of rural youth between 20 and 24 years of age reported having completed secondary educa-tion in the region, while the percentage was 66.1 percent for their urban peers.
25 Scott (2019, 4) reports infant mortality rates 10 times higher in poor rural municipalities of Mexico compared to the better-off metropolitan municipalities, which represents a gap similar to that found when comparing infant mortality rates between the poorest countries and the richest in the world.
26 Countries that had the most extensive land distribution programs between 1950 and 1990 also experienced a greater reduction in inequality in land tenure. This is the case of Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Cuba and Chile. On the other hand, countries with a limited record of agrarian reforms, or reforms focused on colonization or negotiation, rather than land distribution, experienced little change in in-equality of land tenure. This includes countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. By 1990, when many countries adopted neoliberal land negotiation measures based on the free market, this last group of countries, together with Guatemala and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, had one of the most unequal distributions of land in the region. (Albertus 2019).
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sector that, although it continues to be the main source of employment in rural areas, in recent decades has given ground to NFRE, mainly due to the participation of rural women, which accounts for the transformation of rural areas.27 The difference in employment in agriculture between men and women is 19 percentage points (in 2014, 65 percent of men in rural areas in 14 countries of the region worked in agriculture, compared to 46 percent of women).28
In addition, the rural child employment rate has been reduced in almost all the countries of the region, thanks in large part to conditional cash transfer programs and the greater coverage of basic education.29 However, it continues to be well above the level recorded in urban areas (Scott 2019).30 Ending child labour and ensuring decent employment for men and women is critical to achieving SDG 8.
Restricted access to certain public (and private) services tends to reproduce gender inequalities in rural areas, particularly in the case of women living in poverty. Women in rural areas have higher illiteracy rates and lower rates of secondary school attendance, which means their oppor-tunities to achieve economic autonomy and access to employment opportunities are lower than those of men, even without taking into account that the greatest burden of care (children, the elderly and people with disabilities) and domestic work falls on them (Brito and Ivanovic 2019). The need to recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work, as well as ensuring women’s full and effective labour participation, is an integral part of achieving SDGs 5 and 8.
These findings reinforce the notion that social backwardness in rural areas is not only a prob-lem of assets, goods and service gaps, but rather of the reproduction and interaction of differ-ent inequalities (economic, territorial, ethnic and gender) facing their inhabitants. The persistence of rural poverty, the limited access and quality of rural services and the mech-anisms for reproducing rural gaps have sought to be countered - to some extent - with social protection policies. Currently, conditional cash transfer programs, non-contributory pen-sions and other social programs serve significant portions of the rural population. Despite sig-nificant expansions in coverage, 32.6 percent of the rural population still does not have legal health service coverage, compared to 9.8 percent of the urban population (ILO 2015); only 11 percent of the rural population lives in households that receive social security benefits, compared to 19 percent of the urban population. On average, 24 percent of the population of the poorest rural quintile of the region still does not have access to any social protection scheme; for an average of 10 countries, only 1.3 percent of the rural population has access to active labour market policies (WB, online, Winder and Faret 2019). Social protection sys-tems must not only expand their coverage but also adapt to the characteristics of rural areas in order to be more comprehensive and comply with the goals of SDG 10 (Winder and Faret 2019, Trivelli et al., 2017).
27 According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) (2014), in 2005 67 percent of the rural population was employed in primary sectors and 21 percent in the tertiary sector. Nine years later, in 2014, 60 percent worked in the primary sector and 27 percent in the tertiary sector.
28 See Table 5 in Ramírez (2019), based on ILO information for 14 countries.
29 However, child labour rates have been maintained or increased in other countries (Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador and Panama), even in spite of the existence of conditional cash transfer programs and the expansion of public services (Scott, 2019).
30 According to information from CEDLAS-WB (with information as of 2015), the proportion of child labour in rural areas is more than double that of urban areas in most countries.
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Rural territories also face other adverse conditions that aggravate their backwardness: inse-curity, violence and the presence of illegal economic activities. These are phenomena that affect the possibilities of rural families, especially those with fewer resources, to develop their livelihoods in their territories. The limited presence of the State favours the presence of illegal economies, which have a high social, environmental and institutional cost. The inhabitants of these areas suffer the greatest consequences of violence, to the point of generating humanitar-ian crises of confinement or massive displacement, massacres, dispossession of land, extortion and forced recruitment of children and adolescents (Escobar and Rico 2019). In order to achieve SDG 16, it is essential to end violence and reduce the presence of illicit economies in rural areas through a greater presence of the State.
The situations of violence, crime, poverty and hunger are closely related to migration trends from rural to urban areas (inside and outside their countries of origin). The Mexico-United States corridor is the main migratory corridor in the world. It is estimated that half a million migrants from the countries of northern Central America travel annually through Mexico, and their status as irregular migrants makes them vulnerable to serious violations of their human rights. Migrants fleeing precarious situations are not the poorest, but are from sectors that have some assets and can finance the high costs involved in emigrating. Although the poorest people have the greatest incentives to migrate, they also face the greatest limitations to do so (Soto Baquero and Saramago 2019).
If the growing gaps between rural and urban areas and the reproduction of the multiple ine-qualities that affect rural populations, especially rural indigenous and Afro-descendant popu-lations, are not addressed, SDG 10 cannot be achieved.
2.3 The contribution of rural areas to the regional economy and the global food supply
Rural areas and the economic activities developed there or that depend on them have been, are and will be important sources of economic growth, employment and regional exports. Without its rural economy, Latin America and the Caribbean would be a very poor region, and without the region’s food production, global food security would be much more fragile.
Agricultural and livestock production, fishing and aquaculture, forestry, mining, the production of renewable and non-renewable energy, and tourism are all at least partly rural activities. A small portion of manufacturing and services related to primary activities are also rural or de-pendent on rural areas. The food and fresh water that we depend on are rural products. Despite the widespread idea in some circles that the rural economy is a kind of antiquated machine, many of the most dynamic and innovative spaces for economic growth in the coming decades will be in rural areas: the bioeconomy, new sources of renewable energy, environmental services, carbon capture services and the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and resources.
The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) evaluates the social value of the stock of human, physical, and natural capital of the countries and their ability to sustain the well-being of their popu-lation from these three sources of capital (Managi and Kumar 2018). The IWI indicates that 33 percent of the stock of capital that generates wealth in the region comes from natural re-sources (a proportion well above the global average of 20 percent), mainly in rural areas. This figure is greater for South America, where natural capital represents 55 percent of the total stock of capital measured by the IWI. The natural resources in rural areas, both renewable and
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non-renewable, are therefore central to the economy and well-being of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The well-known relationship between GDP growth per capita and the decrease in the share of agriculture in GDP is confirmed in Latin America and the Caribbean (see Figure 5). Howev-er, agriculture continues to be a central activity in the region and, therefore, it must be part of any development strategy for rural areas. Agriculture is part of every solution and change to rural backwardness. If only primary activity is measured, agriculture represents on average 5.3 percent of GDP in South America, 4.2 percent in Central America and 3.2 percent in the Caribbean (Rodríguez et al. 2019). This conventional measurement of the contribution of agriculture to GDP indicates that the weight of the sector varies between 0.5 percent in Trinidad and Tobago and 20.6 percent in Paraguay.
Figure 5. Contribution of agriculture to national GDP and GDP per capita ( percent), 2016
Source: Data based on FAOSTAT (online).
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
BrazilChile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominica
Ecuador
El Salvador
Grenada
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
DominicanRepublic
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Vicent and Granadines
Saint Lucía
Suriname
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
PIB
Agr
ícol
a
PIB per cápita
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However, Trejos et al. (2004, cited in Piñeiro and Elverdin 2019) estimate the total weight of agriculture - including manufactured goods based on agricultural inputs and complementary services to agricultural production - in the economy of nine countries in the region. Table 1 summarizes the main results, showing that the weight of the expanded agricultural sector in the national GDP, for the nine countries studied, is between 1.6 and 7 times higher than the measurement reduced to activity in the primary sector exclusively. In Brazil, for example, the primary agricultural GDP (conventional definition) in 2012 was USD 112.7 billion, or 5 percent of the national GDP, occupying 17 percent of the labour force. If the sectors that provide services or that receive the products of agriculture are added, then the contribution to the national GDP increases to 17 percent, with 18 percent of employment. If the analysis expands to the entire food industry and its services, then the weight of the expanded agri-food sector reaches USD 496 billion, or almost 20 percent of the national GDP and a little more than a third of employment (OECD 2015).
Table 1. Added value of expanded agriculture (as percent of total GDP), 1997
* Based on 2005 census** Based on 2007 censusSource: Piñeiro and Elverdin (2019), based on Trejos, Arias and Segura (2004).
The agricultural sector in the region is a dynamic sector, growing at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent between 2000 and 2016. This growth is explained by the expansion of exports, which have grown at an annual rate of 8 percent since 2000, much higher than the growth of exports in other sectors (which have grown at 5.3 percent per year) due to higher domestic demand (Rodríguez et al. 2019).
The approximately 15 million farmers and two million fishermen in the region produce enough food to meet the energy needs of 821 million people, or 169 million more than the population of the region. Between 1990 and 2015, the total volume of agricultural production grew 132
CountryAgiculture GDP/Total GDP (%)
Expanded Ag-riculture GDP/
Total GDP
Ratio of Ex-panded Agri-culture GDP/ Agriculture
GDP
Argentina 4.60 percent 32.20 percent 7
Brazil* 5.40 percent 8.80 percent 1.6
Chile 5.60 percent 32.10 percent 5.7
Colombia 8 percent 32.10 percent 4
Mexico 4.60 percent 24.50 percent 5.3
Paraguay** 22 percent 28.30 percent 1.3
Peru 6.60 percent 31.80 percent 4.8
Uruguay 6.20 percent 34.80 percent 5.6
Venezuela 4 percent 20.50 percent 5.1
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percent in South America and 85 percent in Central America (Saravia-Matus et al. 2019). In the Caribbean, however, no such expansion has been observed, although agriculture accounts for more than 8 percent of GDP in Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti and Suriname (FAO, 2019c). Fishing and aquaculture are often invisible when we talk about food production. The region has experienced an important expansion in these areas in the last 50 years, contributing 12 percent of the global fishing production in 2017 (Flores-Nava 2019). In the list of the top 20 fish producing countries in the world, the region has three: Peru (6), Chile (11) and Mexico (16) (FAO-FishStat, online).
Inland fisheries (practiced inland and in non-coastal marine waters) produce at least half a million tons per year and are the main source of animal protein for people in hundreds of communities, many of whom live in poverty and belong to indigenous peoples in at least 23 countries of the region (Flores-Nava 2019). Regional aquaculture grew at an average annual rate of 5.2 percent between 1970 and 2017, reaching the historical figure of 2.96 million tons, and this sector has the highest growth rate among the different regions of the planet (Flores-Nava 2019). Micro and small-scale fish farmers have an important role in this activity, and in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Colombia, and Paraguay, among other countries, they contribute two thirds of the national production, with aquaculture being a main means of food security in half a million families in the region (Flores-Nava et al. 2016; ECLAC et al. 2017). The total catch of coastal-marine fisheries reached 22 million tons in 1994 and since then has fallen to 11.6 million tons in 2017 due to climate variability and change, exacerbated by overfishing and institutional weaknesses that impede the appropriate management of the sector (Flores-Nava 2019).
In the great majority of the countries of the region, the bulk of food production is destined for the domestic market, as is to be expected in highly urbanized countries where, in the last 30 years, there has been an increase in income and an expansion of the middle classes. Table 2 presents the percentage of agricultural production that is exported by each of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, for 20 of the most important food groups in regional production. Even in countries that are recognized as agro-exporters, a large part of the pro-duction in a large majority of the product groups remains destined for the domestic market.
Tabl
e 2.
Exp
orts
of 2
0 fo
od g
roup
s in
coun
tries
of L
atin
Am
eric
a and
the C
arib
bean
( pe
rcen
t of t
otal
prod
uctio
n), 2
013
Sour
ce. D
ated
bas
ed o
n FA
OST
AT(2
013,
onl
ine)
. N
ote:
Per
cent
ages
cal
cula
ted
in to
ns o
f pro
duct
.
Co
un
try
Cer
eals
(E
xc B
eer)
Sta
rch
y R
oo
tsS
ug
ar
Cro
ps
Su
gar
an
d
Sw
eete
ner
sP
uls
esT
reen
uts
Oilc
rop
sV
eget
able
O
ilsV
eget
able
sF
ruit
s (E
xc
Win
e)S
tim
ula
nts
Sp
ices
Alc
oh
olic
B
ever
ages
Mea
tO
ffal
sA
nim
al
Fat
sE
gg
sM
ilk (
Exc
B
utt
er)
Fis
h,
Sea
foo
d
Aq
uat
ic
Pro
du
cts,
O
ther
Arg
enti
na
58
.02%
15.3
0%
21.3
8%
89
.71%
30
.77%
15.9
0%
65
.98
%9
.94
%3
1.7%
38
.82%
57.
14%
9.8
8%
11.6
8%
18.5
7%5
9.3
5%
1.61%
24.9
%73
.46
%B
oliv
ia4
.03
%0
.00
%3
2.6
0%
41.2
4%
29.0
%23
.2%
79.2
0%
0.2
9%
12.4
2%10
.53
%0
.00
%27
.0%
0.9
9%
0.0
0%
21.1%
0.0
0%
14.6
5%
0.0
0%
Bra
zil
29.7
7%0
.18%
0.0
0%
69
.20
%1.1
9%
60
.00
%4
9.0
9%
19.9
1%2.
32%
35
.7%
56
.31%
100
.00
%9
.43
%25
.1%3
8.2
%2.
10%
0.8
7%0
.44
%4
.20
%0
.00
%C
hile
11.0
6%
0.17
%0
.00
%7.
96
%20
.63
%8
3.9
1%8
.61%
40
.26
%25
.9%
57.
30
%4
6.0
3%
19.6
8%
78.3
3%
51.0
5%
0.0
0%
12.9
5%
88
.28
%16
.19%
Co
lom
bia
2.6
1%0
.13%
0.0
2%21
.51%
0.0
0%
0.0
0%
0.2
2%22
.6%
0.3
3%
17.7
4%
87.
29%
19.0
5%
0.4
8%
1.89
%1.4
8%
1.59
%0
.15%
0.8
4%
42.
86
%0
.00
%E
cuad
or
2.0
4%
5.2
4%
1.81%
55
.56
%0
.43
%71
.65
%24
.7%
85
.91%
133
.00
%3
3.3
%3
.45
%0
.00
%0
.00
%15
.48
%0
.00
%0
.42%
103
.00
%P
arag
uay
61.9
7%5
.76
%0
.00
%25
.95
%0
.00
%0
.00
%5
5.0
2%8
7.11
%0
.00
%7.
36
%0
.00
%0
.00
%5
.79
%4
0.5
%3
7.8
%3
2.7%
0.19
%0
.00
%0
.00
%P
eru
4.7
5%
0.19
%9
.14%
11.9
4%
81.8
2%12
.39
%19
.05
%19
.59
%14
.67%
84
.04
%26
.9%
8.5
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Agriculture is key in food production, both within the region and globally. Latin America and the Caribbean produces only 13 percent of the world’s food, but contributes 45 percent of glob-al net food exports31 well above any other region in the world (Díaz-Bonilla 2015, see Figure 6). Between 2000 and 2016, agri-food exports grew at annual rates close to 8 percent on average. In 2017, agricultural exports represented 25.8 percent of the total exports of the region (USD 921.7 billion), which contrasts with 2000, when the sector represented 18.4 percent of total exports (Rodríguez et al. 2019). Compared with other regions of the world, the region of Latin America and the Caribbean has the highest agricultural exports as a percentage of the total value exported (López et al. 2017). In Argentina, Belize, Cuba, Ecuador, Grenada, Honduras, Para-guay, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay, agri-food exports represent more than half of total exports (Piñero and Elverdin, 2019).
Figure 6. Net exports of agricultural products, by region
Source: Díaz–Bonilla and Fernandez Arias (2019).
Agriculture continues to be a source of employment, particularly for the rural population. Although between 1990 and 2017 the contribution of primary agricultural production to total employment in the region fell from 19.9 percent to 14.3 percent, this is still the main occupation for the rural population, particularly for men (Ramírez 2019).32
In addition to its productive importance, fisheries and aquaculture directly employ 2.4 mil-lion people in the region (FAO 2016), of which 75 percent are artisanal fishermen and 13 percent small-scale aquaculture producers. In post-harvest activities, particularly processing and marketing, the role of women is prominent at all scales of production. However, it is a sector that faces challenges such as overfishing, the presence of diseases in hatchery fish farming, changes in climate and sea temperatures, among others that affect the possibilities of development of this activity (Flores- Nava 2019).
31 Net exports of food (in USD) calculated by Piñeiro and Elverdin (2019) based on TradeMap for the period 2015-2017.
32 Information from the World Development Indicators (cited in Ramírez 2019). Additionally, Ramírez (2019), for a sample of 14 countries, reports based on ILO data that by 2014, 58 percent of the rural population worked in agriculture (65 percent of rural men worked in agriculture while 54 percent of women worked in non-ag-ricultural rural jobs).
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The rural sector is much more than just agriculture. According to the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF by its Spanish acronym) (2017), half of the electricity generated in Latin America comes from hydroelectricity, and Latin America has only developed an estimated 20 percent of its capacity in this sector. In addition, Latin America has experienced a boom in the generation of non-hydroelectric renewable energies, particularly its wind capacity (42 percent increase in 2015) and, more recently, solar (166 percent increase) (IRENA 2016; Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019).
In rural areas, there is also a large part of the coastal and terrestrial ecosystems and landscapes that attract tourism and generate ecosystem services. Rural areas are also where the forest resources are located, the greatest diversity and the basis of a broad set of industries that generate significant income. For example, it is estimated that the per capita economic value of ecosystem services in the region is USD 33 492 in South America, USD 6 844 in Mesoa-merica and USD 4 090 in the Caribbean (Costanza et al. 2014; Kubiszewski et al. 2017 ).
The above shows that agriculture is a central though not exclusive activity in rural areas. Large-scale agro and family agriculture are important for their contribution to GDP, food production, exports and employment. For this reason, agriculture continues to represent a path of development for rural areas and for relationships between rural, urban and national actors. But, at the same time, we must recognize that rural areas have other productive activ-ities with great economic potential (energy, tourism, environmental services).
2.4. Ecosystems, natural resources and climate change
The region is prodigiously rich in ecosystems, biodiversity and natural resources. Although it only covers 16 percent of the Earth’s surface, it contains 40 percent of the world’s biodiversity, distributed in 12 of the 14 terrestrial biomes and in approximately 190 terrestrial ecoregions, 96 freshwater ecoregions and 44 marine ecoregions (Durango et al. 2019). Forests cover a little less than half of the surface area of the region, and their 936 million hectares are equivalent to 23.4 percent of the forest cover of the planet (COFLAC 2017). The 1 600 millimeters per year of rainfall and the 400 000 cubic meters of runoff, mean that at present Latin America and the Caribbean possesses 31 percent of the fresh water of the planet, although it has only 9 percent of the world’s population. Fisheries in the region contribute 12 percent of the world’s total catch (Flores-Nava 2019).
The region has 756 million hectares of agricultural land, representing 16 percent of the plan-et’s total, as well as 12 percent of the world’s arable land (175 million hectares) (FAOSTAT, online). In addition, 28 percent of the world’s land with medium to high potential for sus-tainable expansion of cultivated areas is located in the region, as well as 36 percent of the land within six hours of travel to a market (Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019). The OECD and FAO (2018) estimate that the agricultural use of land in the region will expand by ap-proximately 11 million hectares by 2027, and that about half of these will be used for crop production.
The region has 15 percent of the world’s iron reserves; 25 percent of tin, bauxite, zinc and nick-el; almost half of copper and silver and between 60 percent and 70 percent of lithium; more
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than 20 percent of recoverable oil reserves, 25 percent of gas reserves and more than 15 percent of non-conventional oil reserves (Albrieu et al. 2011, cited in Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019).
This fabulous natural heritage of the region contributes decisively to environmental sustain-ability and dynamics on a global scale. According to the World Bank (2011), between 1995 and 2005 the growth of natural capital contributed 17 percent of the total wealth growth of the region; only in the Middle East and North Africa (with its enormous oil wealth) is there a greater participation of natural resources in the economy. Coral reefs in the Caribbean annually provide goods and services worth between USD 3.1 billion and USD 4.6 billion (Parsons and Thur 2008, cited in Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019).
Despite the above, Latin America and the Caribbean is also a region with a long history of un-sustainable exploitation of several of its ecosystems and natural resources. Around 74 ecological forest systems are under threat and tropical and subtropical moist forests, tropical and subtrop-ical meadows, savannahs and shrubs have the highest losses of terrestrial biomes (Durango et al. 2019). The Living Planet Index of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (2018) has registered a 60 percent decrease in the populations of species between 1970 and 2014. The same source indicates that the phenomenon is especially pronounced in the tropics, where an 89 per-cent loss was recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1970.
Agriculture has an impact on the loss of biodiversity, especially due to changes in land use, which are responsible for 70 percent of the estimated loss of terrestrial biodiversity (CBD 2014). More than half of the fisheries in the region are overexploited: 55 percent in the Caribbean, 58 percent in the Pacific Ocean of the Southern Cone and 50 percent in the Atlantic Ocean of the Southern Cone (FAO 2016b). According to the FAO (2016b), the fishing areas of the Southeast Pacific (from northern Colombia to southern Chile) and the southwestern Atlantic (from northern Brazil to Argentina) are the areas with the greatest overfishing. In these areas, the percentage of unsustainable populations is 61.5 percent and 58.8 percent, respectively.
Durango et al. (2019) report that the average annual rate of regional deforestation is six million hectares for the period 2004-2017, with peaks of eight million hectares per year (2016) and a minimum of almost four million hectares (2015). In that same period, in South America, 65.5 million hectares were lost (that is 1.3 times the area of Spain), especially affecting the rainforests of Madeira-Tapajós, the Cerrado, the seasonal forests in Mato Grosso, the dry forest of the Cha-co, the southwest of the Amazon, the dry forest of Chiquitano and the rainforest of Caquetá. In Central America, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), about 40 percent of mangrove species are in danger of extinction. 48 percent of the area of lost forests in the region has been converted into pastures, while 53 percent of the change in savan-nah land use was to establish crops (Pendrill and Persson 2017).
According to FAO and GTIS (2015), in 2005, 75 percent of the lands of the region presented problems of degradation, a more serious phenomenon in South America than in Mesoamerica. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification estimates that land degradation represents an annual economic cost of USD 60 billion (Sartori et al. 2017). The excessive use of inorganic fertilizers in some territories of the region has had an impact on the acceleration of soil carbon mineralization and its subsequent emission into the atmosphere. Due to this and other agronomic practices and deforestation, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru are among the countries with the lowest organic carbon stocks in the soil (Gardi et al. 2014).
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Agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean uses 72 percent of the total fresh water extract-ed each year33, although in 2017 this activity generated only 4.7 percent of the regional GDP.34
round 17 percent of fresh water is used for domestic and commercial consumption and only 11 percent for industrial and mining activities.
A hidden form of waste of natural resources is the loss and waste of food. The 150 million tons of food lost and wasted annually in Latin America and the Caribbean (FAO 2016), includes the water, energy and soil fertility required for its production, storage, processing, distribution and commercialization. For example, the amount of water wasted (18 billion cubic meters) is equivalent to the average water consumption of about 205 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, or about a third of the population of the region.35
Access to and use of territories and natural resources is one of the main sources of conflict in the region. The Environmental Justice Atlas database (Figure 7) reveals 919 socio-environmen-tal conflicts in the region between 2000 and 2018. Taken together, mining, agriculture, land conflicts and water management explain 67 percent of socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean. In contrast, and according to the same source, in all of Asia (with a population that is seven times larger) the number of conflicts of this type is 869, and in sub-Sa-haran Africa there are just 281 cases.
Figure 6. Location of 919 socio-environmental conflicts in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2000-2018
Source: Environmental Justice Atlas (online).
33 Data based on AQUASTAT (FAO, online). As a point of reference, in Australia, agriculture contributes 16.3 percent of GDP (2017) and consumes 59 percent of fresh water. According to Cadena et al. (2017), agriculture and the food industry in the region consume twice or triple the water as the same sectors in the United States or China.
34 World Bank (online)
35 The average consumption per person per year in the region is 87.6 cubic meters (equivalent to 240 liters per person per day). Thus, the water footprint of food waste per year corresponds to the average consumption of 205,479,452 people in Latin America and the Caribbean (Berdegué and Coble 2016).
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The present and future of the rural areas in the region is closely linked to climate change. Accord-ing to FAO (2018c), the region contributes 8.3 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide equivalent. Regional agriculture emits 17.8 percent of global emissions from world agriculture. Globally, agriculture contributes 10.6 percent of total emissions, but in Latin America and the Caribbean emissions from the sector double the global average, with 22.6 percent of regional emissions. If forestry and other land uses are added to agriculture (crops plus livestock)36, then emissions from this group rise to 50.7 percent of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the region, a contribution that exceeds that of any other sector, including energy, which contrib-utes 25 percent, transportation (12.5 percent) or industry (4 percent).37
In other words, the region will struggle to reduce its GHG emissions without achieving the in-stitutional and technological changes that will substantially reduce the gases emitted by each unit of agricultural production. The region can achieve this challenge, if we consider that between 1990 and 2015, in five countries of the region (Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Jamaica and Suriname) agricultural production (measured by its value in constant dollars) increased at the same time as total GHG emissions from agriculture decreased (crops and livestock (Saravia-Ma-tus et al. 2019). If to the above we add the emissions (or carbon capture) of changes in land use and forests, the number of countries that managed to decouple their agricultural production from total GHG emissions from agriculture, livestock, forestry and other land uses, rose to 16 countries. This group includes the major agri-food and forestry economies of the region. In other words, there is room in the region to promote agricultural production as the sector’s GHGs de-crease, but institutional incentives are required as well as widespread adoption of practices that capture rather than emit carbon, which must include improved management of soil and forests.38 However, Saravia-Matus et al. (2019) conclude that the countries that have shown the highest increases in agricultural productivity (for example, several in the Southern Cone) are not those that managed to increase production while reducing GHG emissions. In the same regard, eight Caribbean countries show the same trend, which is the opposite direction of what is required.
The governments of the region have recognized the central role of rural areas in the response to climate change (FAO 2018c). Of the 272 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that the countries of the region have agreed as part of their obligations under the Paris Agreement, 123 (45 percent) in-volve rural areas, of which 63 percent are adaptation commitments and the rest are mitigation.
In short, the narrative of development since the postwar years has been committed to min-imize the social and economic weight of rural areas in our societies, considering them to be synonymous with delays and underdevelopment. The evidence provided in this chapter con-firms that agriculture, food systems and rural areas are extremely important for the present and the future of all inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean, especially for the almost 40 percent of the population that lives and works in rural areas, but also for those who live in urban areas. In summary, without rural development there will be no sustainable develop-ment in our region; rural and urban areas are increasingly interdependent because the solu-tions to the most important environmental, climate and food dilemmas facing contemporary societies either originate from or are found in rural areas.
36 These sectors are called Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) in specialized literature.
37 Calculations based on FAOSTAT data as of 2010.
38 Participation of agriculture in GDP, and participation of agricultural employment in total employment.
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We have affirmed that rural development is essential to realize the 2030 Agenda and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the region. We have also seen that, in the last 30 years, the rural environment in Latin America and the Caribbean has undergone notable changes, many of them very positive. Is it enough then to maintain the current direction and pace of the rural contribution to the sustainable development of our region? Have enough adjust-ments or changes been made in these areas? In our opinion, if we continue doing the same thing, the evidence indicates that the type of development represented by the SDGs will not be achieved in rural areas and, as a result, neither will the national goals.
The main reason is that rural structural transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last four decades has been incomplete and very uneven in economic, social and envi-ronmental aspects (WB 2007, IFAD 2016, Benfica 2019). The countries of the region have experienced a rural transformation since the middle of the last century, which is shown in four main areas (Berdegué et al. 2014): the diversification of rural economies; the integration of their agriculture and food systems into global value networks increasingly dominated by extra-rural actors (Wilkinson 2019); the relocation of the rural population and the emptying of the most far-flung and isolated rural territories (the “deep rural” territories), the strength-ening of the links of interdependence between rural and urban areas, and the formation of functional urban-rural territories where the immense majority of the rural population lives; and, finally, the strong reduction of the cultural gap between rural and urban areas thanks to the penetration of the mass media, the improvement in transport networks, and the greater mobility of the rural population. The effect of this process of rural transformation on the reduction of rural poverty and extreme poverty was particularly marked between 2000 and 2012, and since then this relationship has weakened (Benfica 2019).
As Benfica (2019) points out, within the developing world, our region has advanced the most in the economic dimension of its structural transformation.39 However, the rural transfor-mation of Latin America and the Caribbean has been very limited compared to the standard established by the European, North American and Asian experience of the 19th and 20th cen-turies (Timmer 2007, 2009). The assumption that the movement of workers from low to high productivity jobs would lead to a convergence of labour productivity between agriculture and other sectors of the economy and, on that basis, welfare levels (Timmer 2007, McMillan and Rodrik 2011), has simply not been observed in our region, as shown in the chapter on Latin America and the Caribbean of the 2016 Rural Development Report (IFAD 2016). The ex-planation of this result is that, in our region, productivity growth has been intrasectoral, with a very low displacement between sectors (McMillan and Rodrik 2011). In other words, the movement of low-productivity workers in agriculture has been mainly towards low-produc-tivity jobs in the urban or rural sector (the so-called “non-farm” rural “refuge” job, Reardon et al. 2001), and not, as the theory supposed and as happened in Europe and North America (and, more recently, in Asia), towards quality jobs and high productivity in manufacturing or services.
39 Participation of agriculture in GDP, and participation of agricultural employment in total employment.
3. Drivers of change
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The question is, why has Latin America and the Caribbean not been able to carry out a rural transformation like that of many countries in Asia in the 20th century, or that of Europe and North America in the 19the century? According to the aforementioned IFAD report (2016), the structural inequalities present in rural societies in our region and the prevalence of low institutional quality are the cause of our poor performance. At the institutional level, we have also witnessed a trajectory of mediocre and incomplete transformations as suggested by the World Bank (2008)40:
The structural adjustment of the 1980s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided rural producers with access to land, credit, insurance, inputs and cooperative forms of organization. Expectations were that by removing [inter-ventions from the] State, markets would be released and private actors would assume those functions while reducing their costs, improving their quality and eliminating regressive biases. Often that did not happen. In some places the withdrawal of the State was at the most tentative, thus limiting the entry of private actors. Elsewhere, the emergence of the private sector was slow and partial, mainly to serve commercial farmers, but leaving many small-scale producers exposed to widespread market fail-ures, high transaction costs and gaps in terms of agricultural services.
All this resulted in what the World Development Report 2008 (WB 2008) called “the paradox of Latin America and the Caribbean”: the empirical observation that, in our region, unlike the other regions of the planet, growth of agriculture has had a very low impact on reducing rural poverty. In sum, limited or mediocre rural structural transformation explains the persis-tence of rural poverty (IFAD 2016, FAO 2018, Graziano da Silva et al. 2009).
It is against this worrisome background of missed opportunity that we face today three enor-mous and powerful waves of change, which are already exerting their effects on rural areas in Latin America and the Caribbean: climate change, new demands that disrupt what we un-derstand by food systems and the dizzying technological change. These are three ubiquitous drivers of change, operating simultaneously, and whether or not we like it, whether we act or not, the depth and magnitude of their impact on rural societies has not been seen in the 12,000 years since our ancestors invented agriculture (Jarvis et al. 2019, Intini et al. 2019, Piñeiro and Elverdin 2019, Trigo and Elverdin 2019, Wilkinson 2019).
3.1. Climate change
No other phenomenon has had such a strong impact on rural areas, food systems and agriculture, as climate change. This process of change alters the productive conditions of the region and at the same time - to a greater or lesser extent - the productive activities in rural areas also contribute to it. It is impossible to ignore that in our region - as well as in the world - agriculture contributes significantly to the emission of gases that produce global warming and climate change, and for this reason it must be a central part of the solutions that seek to mitigate climate change. While global agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry and land use change are responsible for 24 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, in Latin America and the Caribbean their contribution is more than 1.5 times higher, reaching 42 percent (ECLAC 2018, López et al., 2017). Energy also re presents a substantial percentage of GHG emissions in the region, accounting for almost 25 percent.41
40 Gordillo 2019, pag 7.
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The Paris Agreement includes the goal of limiting the increase in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius, but Jarvis et al. (2019) project that with the current trajectory of emissions of greenhouse gases, about 40 percent of the total land area of Latin America and the Caribbean will have reached or surpassed the threshold of 2ºC in the next 11 years, and that by 2050 the entire region will be under the new climate regime (see Figure 8).42 The areas that will see an increase of 2 degrees sooner (in about five years) include most of the Amazon basin, the central region of Brazil, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Peruvian Andes, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and eastern Colombia. For their part, Central America, Mexico and the Carib-bean will reach this threshold between 2035 and 2040, and Chilean and Argentine Patagonia between 2065 and 2075.
Figure 8. Land area ( percent of total) in Latin America and the Caribbean with a temperature increase equal to or greater than 2ºC
Source: Jarvis, et al. 2019
According to Jarvis et al. (2019), along with changes in temperature, there will be more humid environments in the Southern Cone and in the Western Andes, while in the other regions lower levels of precipitation are projected and therefore greater droughts (Amazonas, Brazil, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean). Rojas et al. (2018) note that “these changes in climate in many places will exceed the limits of natural variability, which will produce climates that are outside the range of farmers’ current experience” (cited in Jarvis et al. 2019).
It is possible to identify differences between different population segments with respect to when they will begin to live in an environment that is 2ºC warmer (Jarvis et al. 2019). The high parts of the central Andes and many areas with mixed production systems (agriculture-livestock), will reach the threshold by 2040; the same thing will happen in the territories where the traditional 41 There are differences according to sub-region. In 2010, the contribution of the energy sector to GHG emis-
sions was 52 percent in the Caribbean, 37 percent in Central America and 17 percent in South America. This last figure is associated with a greater presence of hydroelectric sources in the Southern Cone (Saravia-Matus and Aguirre 2019).
42 A conservative estimate is an 80 percent increase in real world per capita income by 2050 (Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012).
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milpa (corn-bean) system in Central America predominates. Half of the land area of the Pampas will experience an average temperature of +2ºC by 2040. In general, rural areas will be affected by this phenomenon before urban areas. In those regions with a high concentration of indige-nous peoples and mestizo population, half of the land area will be above the threshold of +2ºC by 2030, earlier than territories with greater presence of other populations.
In a world with +2 ºC, which, as we have seen, in our region is just around the corner, it simply will not be possible to practice agriculture as we do today. For example, Seo et al. (2010, cited in Jarvis et al. 2019) predict that, in a hotter and drier scenario, the body mass of dairy cattle in Argentina and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay will increase and will be reduced in the An-dean countries. The fisheries of Belize, Cuba, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will be especially damaged (Ding et al. 2017, cited in Jarvis et al. 2019). The duration of the plant growth period will be reduced by more than 5 percent in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, Suriname and Peru (Ericksen et al. 2011, cited in Jarvis et al. 2019). Jarvis et al. (2019) summarize the scientific results that predict that in our region the average yields of corn, legumes and rainfed and irrigated wheat will be significantly reduced in Mexico and Argentina. The area suitable for sugar cane will be expanded in various parts of the region, while coffee production in Central America will have to move from its current habitat, between 800 and 1,400 meters above sea level, to higher areas, between 1,200 and 1,600 meters above sea level (Baca et al. 2014, cited in Jarvis et al. 2019).
This new context means that any resistance to change, in any aspect, in agriculture and in food systems, is an inherently unviable strategy, although this will not prevent the existence of enormous economic, social and political pressures and incentives for public policy to focus on resisting change.
3.2. Food demand
There are ongoing changes in the global diet that will have important consequences for the agri-culture and food systems of the region. The most evident is the strong expansion in the demand for food, caused by population growth (UN 2017). By 2050, the world there will be 9.7 billion people in the world (a 25 percent increase compared to 2020). Of these, 68 percent will live in urban areas (a growth of 12 percent compared to 2020). In addition, this population - par-ticularly in middle-income countries - will have substantially higher per capita incomes than at present.43 In a scenario of modest economic growth, this implies a growth of around 50 percent in global food demand in 2050, compared to 2013, net of agricultural production destined for biofuels or other non-food uses (FAO 2017).
The projected changes will not only occur at the level of the amount of food, but also at the level of the global diet. The per capita consumption of vegetable oils is expected to increase by 33.3 percent; that of meat by 25.6 percent; dairy products by 19.3 percent; roots and tubers by 13.2 percent, and fruits and vegetables by 13 percent44 (Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012, FAO
43 This is the expected variation in consumption of oils, meat, dairy products and roots and tubers through 2050, with base year 2005-2007, while the data for fruits and vegetables corresponds to the variation be-tween 2012 and 2050.
44 This is the expected variation in consumption of oils, meat, dairy products and roots and tubers through 2050, with base year 2005-2007, while the data for fruits and vegetables corresponds to the variation be-tween 2012 and 2050.
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2009b; 2017; 2018d). Even so, the region is well positioned to respond to this greater demand, taking into account the discussion in Section 2.3.
However, the changes in the global diet do not only affect the demand and availability of food. Today, the relationship between food and health is growing and, moreover, it is radically dif-ferent from the classic problem of the health effects of malnutrition and undernourishment. Today, the type of food available affects the chances of suffering from chronic diseases – hyper-tension, diabetes, etc. - that limit the lives of those who suffer them, but also affect the lives of their families, societies and have an impact on national health systems. In recent decades, the diet of people in Latin America and the Caribbean has changed dramatically.45 This is not the result of independent decisions of 626 million people acting according to their own free will. Today’s diet is the product of a food system markedly different from that of our parents’ time (Intini et al. 2019, Rapallo and Rivera 2019).
Changes in diet are related to transformations in the actors and the formal and informal rules of the food system. The large supermarket chains are a dominant and determining actor in the way we feed ourselves in the region (Wilkinson 2019, Reardon and Berdegué 2002). Popkin and Reardon (2018) present information for 12 countries in the region to show that the food sales of supermarket chains increased almost four times in just nine years: from USD 40 billion in 2002 to USD 154 billion in 2011. In the countries of the region where supermarkets entered later, the growth rate of their annual food sales is around 30 percent, double that of the pioneer countries (Popkin and Reardon 2018). Along with this, the region has experienced an explosive growth of fast food restaurants and chains. Between 2008 and 2016, the 12 leading fast food chains doubled their sales, totalling just over USD 16 billion in 12 countries as reported by Popkin and Reardon (2018). At the same time, food consumption outside the home has also grown exponentially in the region, from around USD 50 per capita per year in 1995 to just over USD 350 in 2016 (in constant 2017 dollars, Popkin and Reardon 2018).
Changes in food systems and diets have had some very positive effects on the well-being of mil-lions of people. For example, in places where modern food systems predominate, the under-five mortality rate is lower and there is a lower rate of anemia in women of reproductive age than in places where traditional systems or even mixed systems continue to prevail (HLPE 2017). Millions of women have joined the workforce, in part thanks to changes in the way food can be accessed, stored and cooked (Reardon and Berdegué 2002).
However, modern food systems in Latin America and the Caribbean (as in the rest of the world) have failed to produce the desired result: to feed the population healthy food. At least 294 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, 47 percent of the population, suffer from one or more forms of malnutrition (see Figure 9). By far, the main manifestation of this failure
45 According to Rapallo and Rivera (2019), the per capita availability of calories in the region has increased markedly, while their origin has changed: lower consumption of carbohydrates and higher vegetable fats, together with an increase in the consumption of animal protein (egg and meats, especially) and, more mod-estly, fruits and vegetables. Fish consumption remains stable at levels well below the world average. Beans show a consistent fall in the diets of people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the regions in the world with the highest consumption of ultra-processed foods (360 grams per day per person, FAO, PAHO and WHO 2017), which is especially the case in Argentina, Chile, Cos-ta Rica, Mexico and the Republic Oriental of Uruguay. According to Popkin and Reardon (2018), triple the recommended amount of added sugars is consumed in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly due to the heavy consumption of sugary drinks.
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of the modern food system is the uncontrolled epidemic of overweight (151 million people in our region, 24 percent of the total) and obesity (105 million people, or 17 percent of the total). The increase in overweight is registered not only in urban areas, but increasingly in rural areas throughout the world, to the point that the rural sector accounts for 60 percent of the increase in the overall body mass index globally.46
Gráfico 9. Forms of malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean, latest data available
Note: Obesity in adults is defined as obesity in people older than 18 years with BMI> 30, including those countries where the prevalence is greater than 19.5 percent. Delay in growth in children under 5 years: those countries where the rate is greater than 19.5 percent are included. Anemia in women of childbearing age: those countries where it is greater than 19.5 percent are included. Hunger: refers to undernourishment, including those countries where the prevalence is higher than 6.1 percent, which is the rate of undernourishment at the regional level.Source: FAO et al, . (2018).
According to the EAT-Lancet Commission (Willett et al. 2019), “Unhealthy diets are the most important factor in diseases, and they bring a higher risk of morbidity and mortality than un-protected sex, alcohol, drugs and smoking combined.” Food, which since the beginning of time has been associated with health and life, today is the main cause of the majority of deaths in the region. Our food system has become the main obstacle to the realization of SDGs 2 (eradicate hunger and all forms of malnutrition) and 3 (guarantee a healthy life and promote well-being for all at all ages) (Intini et al. 2019; Rapallo and Rivera 2019; Berdegué et al. 2018).
46 See NCD-risC (2019), which highlights the growing contribution of rural populations to the increase in body mass index. In Latin America and the Caribbean, due to its greater urbanization, the contribution of the ru-ral population to the increase of this index is 38 percent for women, and 31 percent for men, and this rural contribution increases over time.
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At the same time, and as we have discussed in previous sections, food systems (production, trade, storage, transport, processing, distribution and consumption of food) are closely associ-ated with GHG emissions, and account for a very high proportion of the extraction and use of fresh water, as well as different forms of pollution and the loss of biodiversity and soils.The projection of these effects of the contemporary food system in a scenario of almost 10 bil-lion people in 2050 (when a girl born today turns 31), leaves no doubt that a profound transfor-mation of food systems is urgently needed. Food, according to the EAT-Lancet Commission, “is the most powerful lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on earth” (Willett et al. 2019, 5).
3.3. Technological change
The third driver of change is the result of processes of technological innovation. As pointed out by Trigo and Elverdin (2019), the 2030 Agenda represents a new productive and energy matrix, which also means that a technological change of greater proportions is inevitable.
Beyond this consideration, are the revolutionary effects of a set of frontier technologies47 that have already altered agriculture, food systems and life in rural societies in many ways. The effects of these technologies are not linear adjustments of current social relations, including production and consumption. These frontier technologies are present in information and communications (including microelectronics, data science, artificial intelligence, remote sensing and distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain) and biology (including new tools for genetic improve-ment such as CRISPR-Cas9). The interaction between both fields is producing true revolutions throughout the length and breadth of agriculture and food systems, changing, among other things, the sense of what is “rural”. For example, rural areas have experienced a drastic reduction in the diversity of costs so far associated with distance and the complexities of geography, caus-ing a much more fluid interaction between rural and urban areas, blurring the borders between them and creating new opportunities to improve the quality of life of rural populations (Trigo and Elverdin 2019, Berdegué et al. 2014). In addition, innovations in energy sources and distri-bution technology have opened up a number of new opportunities for the development of new economic activities in rural areas and to ensure the well-being of rural and urban populations.
New technologies in biology and genomics have the potential to facilitate the sustainability and resilience of agriculture and food systems by better understanding the characteristics, potential and limitations of resources and ecosystems, and can intervene based on detailed engineering studies, with a scientific basis, to optimize the role and functionalities of each resource. It seems an agroecology 4.0 is emerging, which involves a dialogue between biotechnology and infor-mation and communication technologies (ICT) to move towards new routes of sustainable production (Trigo and Elverdin 2019).
New technologies bring new actors with them. It remains to be seen what the effects will be on, for example, public policies. The definition of priorities and allocation of public spending, as well as power relations and institutional arrangements, should be reorganized bearing in mind the fact that the main actors of technological change in agriculture and food systems have little
47 Frontier technologies are those that: (i) are related to large-scale economic, social or political opportunities and problems; (ii) are characterized by a high speed of development and technological progress; (iii) have a very broad impact potential, in various fields; and (iv) entail considerable uncertainty about opportunities, risks and future paths (Ramalingam et al. 2016).
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or no relation with agrarian or rural areas (Wilkinson 2019). Companies like Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Bayer, Computomics, Genedata, Siemens or Rockwell Automation, will undoubtedly use their considerable economic muscle and political power. The power that China will acquire in frontier technologies will also be disruptive, thanks to its 260 scientific and technological parks dedicated to agriculture and the food industry, as well as to the 4,000 start-ups that are launched every day in that country (AgFunderNews 2016).
On the other hand, uncertainty and risks are inherent in technological changes of this magni-tude. The distributive effects of this new technological revolution are worrying. Automation, for example, will tend to increase inequality (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2018).48 The effects of displacement of labour in the region will be considerable. According to a much-cited study by the McKinsey Global Institute (Cadena et al. 2017), 58 percent of jobs in Latin American agriculture have a high potential to be automated. The estimate of the percentage of automatable jobs in seven countries in the region49 ranges from 48 percent in Argentina to 53 percent in Peru.
Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018) emphasize that, in addition to the forces that cause the displace-ment of human labour, there are others that will promote the maintenance of certain jobs and the creation of new ones. Nevertheless, the authors point out that nothing guarantees that the net result will be positive and, on the contrary, a greater participation of capital in GDP is expected, parallel to a decrease in labour’s participation. Perhaps more worrisome is the cost and duration of the process of social and economic adjustment. After the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, 80 years had to pass before wages and labour participation in GDP recovered (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2018). The cost of adjustment is greater in societies, such as those in our region, where there are high initial levels of inequality (the benefits of automation will tend to be captured by a few rather than widely distributed, at least initially), a large proportion of workers have low levels of human capital, lack the skills required to participate in the jobs of the future (skills that, in this case, include numerical reasoning, abstraction, and ICT management skills, which are not precisely those imparted by rural education in most of Latin America and the Caribbean) and do not have access to continuing education (life long learning) opportunities that would allow them to acquire these skills.
Thus, it is likely that the structural duality of rural Latin American and Caribbean societies has resulted in a very unequal distribution of opportunities and threats - and of the benefits and costs - of the ongoing technological revolution. Not even those who feel better prepared can rest assured, because the historical experience of previous processes shows that in societies characterized by great inequalities and extractive institutions, it is much more difficult to take advantage of structural transformation processes derived from technological change (Stiglitz 2019, Acemoglu and Robin-son 2013, Acemoglu and Restrepo 2018, McMillan and Rodrik 2011).
The technological changes underway open up highly positive opportunities for the progress of rural areas, agriculture and food systems. They also bring risks and uncertainties. The challenge is
48 This is no different from previous processes of displacement of work caused by the introduction of ma-chinery. Schmitz and Moss (2015), for example, indicate that the largest farms in the state of Kansas, in the United States, adopted the use of the tractor in the first two decades of the 20th century, 74 percent faster than medium-sized farms. As a result, the tractorization of US agriculture led to an increase of at least 10 times in the average size of the farms, derived from the inability of small-scale farmers to survive in the new scenario.
49 Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
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to take advantage of the opportunities while mitigating the risks. As mentioned above, focusing on the distributive aspects of change must be a central part of the agenda to share the opportunities that this driver of change has brought to rural areas.
In addition to these three powerful drivers of change that affect rural and agricultural areas, there are two additional processes that must be taken into account to understand the complex and changing context in which rural areas face the challenge of development: demographic changes and the changing international context.
Regarding the first of these, rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean are not excluded from the aging process of the population. Between 2010 and 2015, the region reached its highest rate of aging, when the population between 60 and 74 years reached its peak. The aging index estimated by ECLAC shows that, although aging is growing at decreasing rates since 2015, the process is likely to show important changes in the coming years. As mentioned above, in 2017 there were 38 adults over 65 for every 100 children in rural areas of the region, but by 2030 there will be 64.
Aside from aging, the demographic change in rural areas that we must pay the most attention to is the decrease in absolute terms of the number of young people. Since 1995 the total number of young people (between 15 and 24 years old) in Latin America has fallen from just over 25 mil-lion rural youth, to 21 million in 2017, and is expected to decline to 17 million by 2030. The demographic bonus ended years ago for Latin American rural areas. Despite this, rural youth are called on to be agents of rural change. It should be noted that these are young people with more education than their parents and grandparents and with access to new assets and means that will allow them to take advantage of new technologies. These young people will require technological innovations to stay in rural areas and to help boost their development.
Regarding the second process, as pointed out by Piñeiro and Elverdin (2019) and Willkinson (2019), the international context relevant to rural development and agri-food is constantly chang-ing. The preponderant role of China and the current trade tensions and technological war between this giant and the United States will have uncertain consequences for our region. Global geopolit-ical changes will affect not only the participation of our products in global markets, but also other markets that are key for the sustainability of the rural transformation that is required (financial, innovation, etc.).
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The policies, programs, strategies and incentives to promote the development of agriculture and rural areas have always been in response to objectives that, in general, have exceeded the scope of rural development. These objectives are based on broad agreements that have defined the pur-pose and meaning of major public policies. From them have been derived the guidelines on the role of agriculture and rural development in the countries of the region. In the last 80 years, we recognize two of these great agreements: the industrialization strategy led by the State between 1950 and 1980 and, later, the Washington Consensus (Bértola and Ocampo 2013). After the Second World War, within the framework of the regional structuralist commitment to import substitution, the consensus on the role of agriculture was to promote the production of more food at lower prices, in order to sustain the processes of industrialization and urbaniza-tion. In this framework, institutions were created, subsidies were applied and technologies were developed to achieve the objective. The productive revolution (framed in turn in a global effort, the Green Revolution), the creation and expansion of international development banks for ag-riculture and public research and extension systems, subsidies for agricultural inputs, protection of markets, among others, are examples of the initiatives resulting from this first consensus. Within the framework of this consensus, the migration from rural to urban areas was seen as a mechanism of social mobility (Scott 2019).
However, in the 1980s, the consensus changed. The focus of attention shifted from production and productivity to focusing on the commitment to competitive agriculture, expanding region-al participation in global agricultural markets and generating foreign exchange. It was assumed that efficiency and competitiveness in the global market would be the engine of development and well-being for countries and their rural areas. All markets were liberalized, agricultural de-velopment entities were closed, the importance of phytosanitary and animal health systems was emphasized to promote the participation of regional production in global markets, free trade agreements were signed, social programs were created to serve those who fail to insert themselves in markets, etc.50
These two consensuses responded to the demands of their time, to national and regional cir-cumstances, but also to global economic, political and social processes.
The changes experienced by agriculture and the rural sector under the aegis of each of these agreements explain to a large extent the characteristics of agriculture and rural areas described in the previous sections. The policies implemented within the framework of these two strategies - in interaction with the economic, social and political context of the region - led to an incom-plete rural transformation (IFAD 2016, Benfica 2019).
50 See quote from WB (2008) cited in Gordillo (2019) included in Section 3.
4. A call to action: Ruraltransformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
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The region today requires a new consensus to face, and take advantage of, the three major trans-formations underway - environmental, food and technological – not only to achieve greater well-being and sustainability for rural areas, but also to ensure that the rural sector continues to be a source of resources, food and opportunities for the economies and societies of the region and the world. It is evident that the linear projection or the expansion of policies implemented since the 1980s is not the appropriate response.
The important question is whether, in order to achieve the social, environmental and economic changes proposed by the SDGs, the main strategy should be to try to resist these three major drivers of change (environmental, food and technological) and delay the necessary structural changes as long as possible, or if, on the contrary, we should take advantage of these three drivers to make profound innovations to promote environmental sustainability and healthy eating. If sufficient food and competitiveness were, respectively, the rationale for the two preceding strat-egies of the 20th century, the environment and healthy eating should be central concerns of the rural transformation strategy in the 21st century, while any transformation agenda should also consider as an essential and urgent condition, the achievement of significant advances in social inclusion and the reduction of inequality.
This rural transformation - for the sustainability of the planet and the healthy diet of humanity, together with social inclusion - will only be possible if global society recognizes rural areas and demands that they play a new role in the development of the region. To achieve this goal, we must start by recognizing the importance of rural areas: demographic, cultural identity, produc-tive and economic; their close relationship with ecosystems, environmental services and natural capital; and their interdependence with urban areas. But we must also recognize the existing backwardness in rural areas and the enormous inequalities that rural people face. Rural trans-formation is impossible without a very significant advance in the solution of backwardness and inequalities that characterize many rural areas of Latin America.
Within the framework of this rural transformation - for sustainability and healthy eating - we propose four essential areas of action to achieve the conditions that would allow us to take ad-vantage of the major drivers of change (environmental, food and technological) and face the pending challenges to achieve rural development and enhance the contribution of rural areas to the development of countries and the world.
The first of these is oriented towards people, communities and rural territories, which in order to sustain the development process need to be a part of it. We propose launching an active process of social inclusion, which not only includes those in a situation of poverty or vulnerability, but the entire rural population, guaranteeing basic conditions - at least similar to those of urban environ-ments - for the exercise of full citizenship, and so that each rural resident can take advantage of the opportunities and progress based on their skills, effort and resources, and thus improve their well-being and development. It is about promoting the development of the rural population, not only to alleviate their poverty or reduce the gaps they face today in multiple dimensions. The aim of this first area of action is that no citizen should see their future and their contribution to development - their own, that of their community, their territory, or their country - limited by living in a rural area. It is not only about closing the existing gaps, but about changing the social and economic relationships that perpetuate these gaps. It is, in the end, about confronting and reducing the multiple inequalities faced by rural inhabitants, which is necessary to achieve SDGs 5 and 10 and at the same time contribute to the achievement of SDGs 1 and 2.
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The second is linked to the urgency of promoting a new rural economy, which is both eco-nomically and environmentally sustainable, with increasing levels of productivity, not at the expense of natural capital but thanks to innovation. It is not only about achieving sustainable agriculture - with lower emissions, efficient use of water, etc. - but broadening the spectrum of activities towards other emerging sectors and potential drivers of economic dynamism: the bi-oeconomy, tourism, renewable energies, healthy foods, environmental services and biodiversity conservation, other rural services, etc. This area is especially relevant to the fulfillment of SDGs 7, 8, 9 and 12.
The third area of action is oriented towards a redefinition of the relationship of rural areas with ecosystems, natural resources, and climate change, focused on resilience and sustainability. We cannot continue thinking that limiting or reducing emissions are restrictions that negatively affect the development of agriculture, food systems and rural areas. On the contrary, the enor-mous innovations that will be necessary for sustainability and resilience will be increasingly important incentives for economic growth and development. We must learn to grow by pre-serving natural resources and reducing emissions from agriculture, livestock, fisheries and land use change, while adapting to new climate scenarios. Although we are focused on rural areas, this redefinition requires a national and global process that recognizes the role of rural areas in protecting, maintaining and valuing ecosystems and natural resources, and the importance of mitigating the effects of climate change. In this regard, the proposed climate action to achieve SDGs 13, 14 and 15 is very important.
Finally, the fourth area, which is mainly related to SDGs 16 and 17, includes the development of an institutional framework that is necessary to realize the above: achieving full rural citizen-ship, developing a new diversified and sustainable rural economy, and rethinking our relation-ship with natural capital and the environment. It is unlikely that the current sectoral and public schemes in rural territories will be able to facilitate these processes.
4.1. Social inclusion: Basic conditions for citizens to contribute to rural development
As we saw in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, the rural and urban-rural population is large and diverse with a significant presence of groups of Afro and indigenous descent - occupying enormous extensions of the territory of the region where the majority of natural resources are located – who bring different ways of relating to the environment and different modes of production, organization, identity and culture, which are interrelated in various ways with urban, national and global development. However, it is also the population segment that faces the greatest social backwardness and exclusion.
A sustainable development process, like the one proposed, requires a rural population with the capacity to participate and contribute to the process. The development of the region is not pos-sible, if almost four out of 10 people still live in 20th century contexts, or even in conditions similar to those of the 19th century. As a result, first it is necessary to ensure a minimum level of protection for the most vulnerable; second, all rural inhabitants must be able to participate in the development process - productively, socially and politically - and third, it is important to adapt to changing environmental conditions (climate resilience).
Regarding the first step, as proposed by Winder and Faret (2019), it is urgent to redirect social protection efforts to achieve universal minimum coverage that serves as a basis for complemen-
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tary processes to promote economic opportunities and social inclusion. This implies a signif-icant expansion of existing coverage - 37 percent of the total rural population and 24 percent of the rural population in the poorest quintile does not receive any type of social assistance51 - and better social protection: with more resources adapted to different user profiles - children,seniors, women, populations with indigenous ancestry, etc.- and territories, and with adequateprovision of basic services (health, education, housing, etc.) that ensure the capacity of everyperson to exercise their basic rights. This proposal has a fiscal cost and requires coordinationbetween different social services to achieve an effective territorial presence, but it could alsobring enormous benefits: greater local consumption; better nutrition including a significantreduction in health costs related to noncommunicable diseases; helping to breaking the cycleof intergenerational poverty reproduction; greater social mobility; generates processes of “dou-ble inclusion”52 , and reduces inequality (for further discussion on the subject, see Winder andFaret 2019, Brito and Ivanovic 2019, Correa 2019, FAO 2018).
Regarding the second, it is urgent to redesign the existing programs and/or create initiatives that empower the rural population so that they can take advantage of the opportunities in their areas. This includes, of course, social programs: capacity building, employability, transfer of assets and capacities, etc.53 But, it is also about achieving effective property rights - individual and collective - and implementing mechanisms of social participation and giving a voice and power to local communities to decide what should be done and how to do it. This means ensuring access to public and private services, including financial and business development services, as well as the provision of infrastructure and a minimum level of public and private services (in coverage and quality). Social protection measures depend on who they are for and for what purpose, and as a result should be socially and territorially diversified, while seeking to achieve a universal social protection scheme, which must be complemented with targeted interventions according to the characteristics, needs and preferences of the different social and economic groups. Only in this way can the basic conditions for processes of social mobility be guaranteed (Scott 2019, Fort 2019, Winder and Faret 2019). In particular, these social interventions must ensure opportunities for rural youth, if they wish to stay in rural areas and contribute to their development. Rural youth are the main actors called on to be agents of rural change and to take full advantage of the current drivers of change, in particular due to their greater environmental awareness, ability to adapt to the new climate context and their lower resistance to the adoption of new technologies. In the Caribbean, in particular, the commit-ment to young people is vital, since they represent one of the greatest drivers of change.
Third, it is necessary to strengthen resilience, that is, the capacity to function in a changing world - environmentally, economically and socially - with instruments to face unexpected ad-verse situations – or shocks – and the ability to adapt to new contexts (especially climate relat-ed) and with a voice to influence the decision-making processes that affect the rural population and their organizations (FAO 2016c, 2018). Additionally, the resilience agenda of the rural population requires instruments and services that allow them to face, and adapt to, the deterio-ration of the productive and environmental conditions of their territories. It also requires social
51 Information obtained from ASPIRE (Winder and Faret 2019) reflects that social protection systems have, despite their limitations, greater coverage in the highest poverty strata.
52 Double inclusion refers to social inclusion and productive inclusion (HLPE 2017).
53 In the region there are already examples of programs of this type implemented with relative success, but that still have not reached the scale required. See, for example, Cortínez et al. (2016) and Escobal and Ponce (2016).
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instruments and sustained and effective support to combat the penetration of illegal economies in their territories.54 Mechanisms so that the population is better prepared to face unexpected events and their consequences not only prevent the negative effects of the unexpected event from perpetuating over time, but also reduce the present and future inequalities between the poorest and the less poor.
Finally, there is no possibility of thinking about a full rural citizenship while maintaining schemes that discriminate against important portions of the rural population. In this regard, the sustainability of any rural development effort will depend on how effective the process is in reducing the gender gaps in rural areas and in counteracting the inequalities - economic, social and political - that affect indigenous and Afro-descendant rural populations. It is important to remember that half of rural people are women and that 39 percent have afro or indigenous an-cestry55 and, above all, that both groups have control or influence on significant rural, human, social, cultural, economic and natural resources (for more detail see Brito and Ivanovic 2019, Yancari 2019, Mireles 2019, Correa 2019).
Ensuring that the rural population has the full capacity to exercise their rights and contribute to the development of their community requires a different response from the public sectors. Not only are more resources needed, but it also requires adopting a new perspective that considers social and sectoral programs as instruments of a greater strategy of social inclusion, and that listens to, respects and empowers the rural population. In this regard, the changes implemented in several countries are promising, ranging from traditional Ministries of social development to more ambitious Ministries aimed at achieving social inclusion. Without rural citizens capable of exercising their rights and deciding on their future in the same conditions as any other citizen of the region, development will be impossible to achieve.
4.2. Transforming the rural economy
We have seen in Section 2.3 that in recent decades agriculture in Latin America and the Car-ibbean has been a very dynamic activity, driven largely by international demand. The sector’s growth is linked to the expansion of the food industry and the services associated with pro-duction, storage, processing, commerce, distribution and consumption. The demand for food should continue to grow in the coming years to meet the needs of a growing population with higher incomes. The region is well positioned to be an important source of food for the world.
It could be argued that this scenario could be the central axis of any strategy for the devel-opment of rural economies in the coming decades, which is to continue to bet only on the production of commodities in which the region has a proven competitive advantage. We be-lieve that this line of thinking would be a profound mistake. The most promising strategy for vigorous economic growth is to diversify agricultural production and regional food systems to meet the demands of a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet. The so-called new climate economy, which is based on healthy food, sustainable and diversified agricultural production, development of new services and the bioeconomy, can be the pillars of a new rural economy
54 These include instruments and services ranging from processes of financial inclusion to prepare for unex-pected events (see IPA, 2019), to sophisticated insurance schemes (of varied format and low cost, such as indexed insurance) and efficient social protection schemes in the event of large-scale natural disasters.
55 In countries such as Brazil, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay, they represent more than half of the rural population.
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in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is this strategy that requires greater technological and social innovation, greater linkages with industry and services (and, therefore, greater multi-plier effects), and greater added value, which also opens up more space for social inclusion. This strategy will require a huge public and private commitment to overcome the resistance of those who prefer the current state of affairs based on traditional exports. In addition, moving forward in this direction requires major institutional reform.
To take advantage of the new matrix of economic opportunities, it is urgent to develop new management tools, in addition to expanding, improving and innovating rural services that will make these new options viable, such as connectivity and digitalization, and, at the same time, establishing paths for change and market incentives that allow businesses, entrepreneurs and farmers, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and family farmers, to adapt to new demands and take advantage of new opportunities.
The incompleteness of the previous transformation (see Section 3) means it is necessary to strengthen efforts to increase the productivity of agriculture and non-agricultural rural activities in light of the agendas of environmental sustainability and healthy eating. The competitiveness agenda remains in force, with the important consideration that today it does not depend only on traditional factors, but on what we call “unconventional determinants of competitiveness” of a social nature (such as the working condition of salaried workers, child labour, respect for labour rights, acceptance of local communities, etc.) and the environment (carbon or water footprint, relationship with deforestation processes, etc.).56 The productivity and competitive-ness agenda has been maintained, although it has been expanded and renewed.
To participate in the new competitiveness agenda, all traditional rural services - extension, agrarian innovation, financing and health - must be renewed57 and framed within the new rules of value chains and global markets and trends (Piñeiro and Elverdin 2019; Wilkinson 2019, Rodriguez et al. 2019a). Additionally, the economic agenda of rural transformation requires taking into account new actors beyond traditional agricultural social groups. These include companies in the world of information technology and social communication, biotechnology and the bioeconomy, start-ups of all kinds, environmentalists and entrepreneurs who value environmental services and the rich rural cultural heritage, the social media giants, e-commerce companies and consumers armed with social media that have an increasing influence in food trends, among others. These are instances that can offer attractive options for rural youth, as long as they can develop the skills required to act in this new rural economy.
The trend of agriculture (as a primary activity) losing power and autonomy with respect to agro-industry since the 1970s, and then to the large supermarket chains (Wilkinson 2019, Penagos and Ospina 2019), is likely to become increasingly pronounced — the agriculture sector will only exist as a component of major food systems with little power of its own.
In the new agenda of rural economic development, the Ministries of environment, health and science and technology will gain influence compared to the Ministries of agriculture and 56 Situations already observed, for example, are the decoupling of agricultural production from CO2 emissions
(Saravia-Matus et al., 2019).
57 As discussed extensively in Trigo and Elverdin (2019); Rodríguez et al. (2019 a); Díaz-Bonilla (2019); Díaz-Bo-nilla and Salvo (2019).
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rural development, which, as discussed below, will have to reinvent themselves in order not to become obsolete.
Rural transformation with a view to environmental sustainability and healthy eating, with an important component of social inclusion, requires a debate on the role of the State, with new conditions and objectives, as well as new actors and opportunities, but also with complicated tensions. Incentives and subsidies need to be redesigned and investments prioritized to gen-erate the conditions that lead to the development of a new rural economy. There is an urgent need to discuss how to build the new agenda of public policies, who will exercise leadership and what decisions need to be made.58
What public goods and services are required by this new diversified and sustainable rural econ-omy? Any response must also contemplate the fact that public resources are limited (and that they must be oriented above all towards the provision of public goods, as recommended by Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019) and there is also the need to generate new financial instruments that allow the private sector to mobilize resources towards the rural sector (private-public part-nerships, tax benefits, green bonds, social bonds, etc.) (Diaz-Bonilla and Saravia-Matus 2019).
Additionally, this discussion must occur simultaneously with the social inclusion actions de-scribed in the previous section. In particular, rural transformation - for healthy eating and environmental sustainability - requires social assistance for the economic development of pop-ulations of indigenous and Afro-descendant descent.59 Ideally, these should include economic options that allow them develop the vast natural resources they control, not only because of the positive effect that community management schemes have demonstrated in the preservation of natural capital, but as part of a process of economic inclusion of these groups, which are unfortunately overrepresented in rural poverty (Durango et al. 2019).
The rural economic development agenda faces the traditional challenge of addressing the dual-ity between large-scale agriculture, agro-industry and exports, and family farming. The starting point is to decide if we believe that family farming has its own space in the agri-food economy of the future. That is, are policies for family farming only justified on the grounds of cultural identity, social justice and sustainable environmental management of the resources they con-trol and the ecosystems they inhabit? Or is there an economic argument? Since the first half of the last century this has been (in one way or another) a recurring question, almost always raised by those who are predisposed to answer the question negatively, giving rise to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: “they are not viable”, therefore, at best, poor policies are developed for poor farmers. We believe that family farming in Latin America and the Caribbean is not only a social sector with cultural and environmental contributions, but with real economic potential. There are two key facts: (i) even after the enormous shock caused by the Washington consensus and its related policies and institutional changes, family farmers did not decrease in number or in the total land area they control, and at least 5 million farm units (that is, many times more than the total number of corporate farms in our region) still operate in local, national and global markets, despite having much less access to technical assistance and financing compared
58 Pomareda (2019) discusses the importance for rural entrepreneurs of having information on future invest-ments in infrastructure, improvements in security, etc.
59 An innovative proposal on rural service platforms that should be part of this social assistance scheme is dis-cussed in Sotomayor et al. (2019).
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to large producers (Berdegué and Fuentealba 2011; Schneider 2014); and (ii) in our region, we have hundreds if not thousands of groups of family farmers, many of them indigenous smallholders, who by combining their own knowledge with social systems and innovations that come from outside, have broken into dynamic, competitive and sophisticated markets, thanks to the fact that they have received technical assistance, financing, investment in basic infrastructure and support for associativity, which many more farmers in a similar situation lack; in other words, the experience shows that when family farmers are supported with rele-vant policies and programs of good quality, important segments of family farming are able to produce and compete well in markets. This second argument is not unique to our region, as it is analogous to the experience of hundreds of millions of extremely productive family farmers in Europe, New Zealand, the United States, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and China, as well as those around the world who have had the opportunity since the 1960s to adopt and respond to the new technologies of the Green Revolution, and that today produce the largest amount of grains needed to sustain the global diet. It is true that there are very large segments of family farming that, due to the combination of having very scarce productive resources and/or being located in isolated or agro-ecologically very adverse territories, survive through life strategies in which agricultural production is often only a small component of their total income gener-ation; but this condition cannot be extrapolated to all 15-16 million family farming units in our region.
The minimum agenda for family farmers to realize their productive potential, which is still far from being a reality in many countries, includes access to quality public services (technical assistance, training and financing for technological innovation; irrigation and drainage infra-structure and mechanization appropriate to their scale; electrification and rural roads passable throughout the year in the territories where family farmers are concentrated; risk management systems; and organization to facilitate market participation). This agenda assumes a radical break with two prejudices strongly entrenched in the region: that family farming lacks produc-tive potential and that, therefore, it should be treated as a problem of social backwardness; and another bias, which is extraordinarily harmful, assumes that poor quality services are sufficient for poor farmers.
Seriously addressing the economic inclusion of family farming, beyond this minimum agenda, means asking where are the drivers of growth for this sector. Family farming does not have much room for expansion in three of the four most important commodities in the region, where economies of scale are very large: meat, sugar and vegetable oils. The situation is differ-ent with regard to coffee, cocoa, fresh fruits and vegetables, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture, dairy products, ornamental products and a wide range of products for niche markets, where there are real possibilities for growth. Perhaps even more important is to identify the potential contribution of family farming to the valuation and conservation of environmental services, biodiversity, genetic resources and rural cultural heritage.
In short, we propose an economic development agenda for family farming (including indige-nous and Afro-descendant peoples) comprised of three main areas:
i. the struggle to ensure universal access for family farmers to a package of quality public services;
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ii. the competitive positioning in specific production and value chains related to the de-mand for healthy foods; and,
iii. the development of the necessary capacities to be central actors in a new relationshipbetween society and nature.
These three areas include employment opportunities in primary activities, but also in rural non-farm employment (processing and services).
To achieve this change, it is important to consider the heterogeneity of family farming, on the one hand, and on the other that it is not only a productive activity, but a set of localized and interlinked economic activities, which form part of a cultural process in Latin America and the Caribbean (Grisa and Sabourin 2019).
Within the family farming sector, and the rural population in general, young people demand an economy that offers them opportunities and gives them reasons to remain in rural areas. In this regard, the new technologies will not only allow the development of new sectors and economic ac-tivities in rural areas, but could also compensate to some extent the demographic changes in rural areas. These technologies create important opportunities for young people to develop new services, add value to traditional rural activities and become real engines of innovation in rural areas.
4.3. Redefining the relationship with natural resources and ecosystems
One of the pillars of the new rural transformation is the profound redefinition of our relation-ship with natural resources and ecosystems. It is about ensuring their conservation and sustain-able use, and thus the continuity of the environmental services they provide us. These services constitute a source of opportunities for development and economic and cultural inclusion for rural populations, in particular for certain groups that have access to and knowledge about natural resources and their sustainable use, such as populations with Afro and indigenous an-cestry, guardians of large areas of forests, which contribute to the restoration and provision of ecosystem services.60
The redefinition of the relationship with natural resources and the environment requires at least three routes of action. The first is related to the effective implementation of regulations that ensure the preservation of resources, species and ecosystems, particularly for those in a situation of high vulnerability. The Red List 2019 of the International Union for the Conser-vation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that of the 63 837 species evaluated for the region, 19 817 are threatened by extinction, including 41 percent of amphibians, 33 percent of reef-forming corals, 25 percent of mammals, 13 percent of birds and 30 percent of conifers. Also, the IUCN has identified that agriculture, livestock, fisheries and land use change are the main threats to biodiversity (IUCN 2019).
There are valuable experiences regarding the establishment of protected natural areas and biodi-versity reserves. Although these mechanisms, which are widely used in the region, have positive effects, they still face limitations in fully enforcing the restrictions they impose (Durango et al. 2019), either because of the weakness and complexity of management systems, the limited en-59 According to the Rights and Resources Initiative (2014), in Brazil, Peru, Mexico, the Plurinational State of Bo-
livia, Colombia, Suriname, Guyana, Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica, there are 226 million hectares of forests that are owned by of indigenous populations and their communities. In addition, there are 44 million hectares with other uses that are also controlled by people of indigenous descent.
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forcement capacity of States, or because of the presence of actors that act illegally or informally in these spaces (Durango et al. 2019 Escobar and Rico 2019).
The second refers to the implementation of new schemes for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems, based on the control and participation of rural people. There is evidence of the effectiveness of different systems of community management of protected areas and of sustainable use of fragile ecosystems such as moorland or primary forests.61
The third route of action deals with the use of new market-based schemes, which allow a sustain-able use of resources through the generation of economic opportunities, internalize externalities through market processes and generate sustained flows of income for entrepreneurs and rural people. Some examples are payment schemes for conservation services, remuneration for capture of greenhouse gas emissions, and trade schemes that include favourable prices for products from sustainable production schemes (such as fair trade markets that pay premiums to producers that preserve ecosystems, who do not use agrochemicals, etc.) and the development of services based on environmental sustainability (ecotourism, for example).
In the case of non-renewable resources, the proposals are aimed at ensuring the internalization of the environmental and social externalities of their production and the mitigation of resulting environmental damages, as well as channelling the resources obtained for the generation of other sources of capital (human or physical) that can sustain development processes and avoid loss or decapitalization as a result of the processes of exploitation of non-renewable resources.62
In addition, it is essential to generate social assistance schemes that facilitate the processes of ad-aptation of rural populations to new climate contexts and the development of new mechanisms to increase the resilience of rural populations to changes. It is not only about better mechanisms to face adverse climatic situations - which will be increasingly large and more frequent - but also to be better prepared for these scenarios. Forming a new relationship between the rural economy and nature requires reforming and strengthening the mechanisms of consultation and approval of social license for the exploitation of natural resources and facilitating the active, informed and empowered participation of rural populations in the processes of design, implementation and distribution of the benefits derived from their use. Hence, the importance of information and monitoring schemes available to rural populations, mechanisms for prior consultation and participation in all stages of projects that use natural resources, but also the right to citizen protest and, therefore, the need for mechanisms for the peaceful and democratic solution of potential socio-environmental conflicts.
61 Durango et al. (2019) report the positive results of the implementation of community mechanisms for forest management; Bebbington (2019) highlights the potential of solutions based on community approaches to face development challenges, but also recognizes that these are not exempt from conflict and tensions that should not be underestimated; Gordillo (2019) highlights the role of social coalitions required to achieve rural governance schemes that facilitate development; Rodriguez et al. (2019b) presents examples of innovative ar-rangements that allow rural populations to correct faults in markets and institutions in the provision of services relevant to their development.
62 Regarding these processes of capitalization or decapitalization, the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) allows us to see the aggregate effect at the country level of the change in the composition of total capital and partial chang-es in human, physical, and natural capital (Managi and Kumar 2018).
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5. An institutional framework for rural transformation
We argue in this document that three powerful drivers of change (the environmental, food and technological) will result in deep transformations in agriculture, food systems and in rural areas. We assert this as a fact. We propose, as policy guidance, that we can and must take advantage of the momentum of these drivers to advance in social inclusion, environmental sustainability and resilience, and in a healthy diet for all, within the framework of a new rural transformation.
Nothing guarantees that the modifications induced by the drivers of change will go in the pro-posed direction. In fact, we have witnessed how the structural transformation between the post-war period and the first years of the 21st century had mediocre economic effects, was insufficient in terms of social inclusion and the environmental impact was simply treated as an externality of the process. In order for this change to be successful for the rural sector, it is necessary to ensure favourable institutional arrangements and understand the underlying political processes (Berde-gué and Favareto 2019, Gordillo 2019, Penagos and Ospina 2019).
The Independent Panel on Agriculture for the Development of Latin America (PIADAL) (2013, 85), asked:
(…) it is widely known and has been technically demonstrated that agricultural policy in all, or at least in most countries, has important design and implementation flaws, has left important problems unresolved and has created new problems, while reproducing and deepening others that have been present for a long time and, especially, that it has evident deficiencies in relation to the most important present and future challenges. Technicians and specialists know it, the secretaries or ministers of agriculture know it, professional politicians know it, journalists and experts know it, union and social lead-ers know it and, of course, farmers and those who carry out their economic and social life in the sector know it. And, nevertheless, these policies have not changed. Why?
Different studies have sought to answer this key question.63 The World Development Report of the World Bank (2008), for example, concluded that the structural adjustment of the 1980s had been sufficient to dismantle the institutional system hitherto in force, but had failed to build a new framework. As Gordillo (2019) points out, the balance of that process were incomplete markets and institutional vacuums that imposed high economic, social and environmental costs. On the other hand, Penagos and Ospina (2019) point out that institutional arrangements are guided by a narrow or short-sighted reading of the rural reality, meaning the responsibility of leading rural development in most of the countries of the region usually falls on the Ministries of agriculture. The problem is that this work, in practice, exceeds the capacity of these entities, combined with the fact that the other Ministries usually lack adequate models of action in rural areas. The result is that their interventions tend to be fragmented, dispersed, not very cost-effi-cient and often ineffective.
63 FAO 2009a is a reference for this discussion.
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The response of PIADAL consists of three parts:
i. Agricultural policy in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean is a fragmentedset of partial agreements, the result of particular negotiations, sometimes private, be-tween interest groups or, at best, coalitions within a narrow social base, public sectorsand the ruling coalition.
ii. Due to the fragmented nature of this political process, old problems persist, it becomesmore difficult to take advantage of opportunities and challenges cannot be overcome.
iii. The driver of change in agricultural policy must be political, not technical.
In short, we do not know any study that has analyzed the current institutional arrangements in agriculture, food systems and the rural areas of our region, and conclude that what we have is what we need to face the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. If we aspire to a deep rural transformation, it is essential to promote a robust institutional change in the directions indicated in this document.
Beyond the specific objectives of institutional change that we discuss below, we propose that we need to think about an institutional political space mandated to build a new political and social consensus regarding rural transformation, translate it into public policies and budgets, stimulate coalitions and alliances to promote it, and monitor, evaluate and make the inevitable adjustments to strategies and programs.
Rural transformation will undoubtedly be the result of thousands of actors and initiatives op-erating in the most diverse State and non-State areas. But this process would be more effective and more viable if there were high-level, supra-sectoral, public-private bodies that are responsible for generating political and social agreements, defining the guidelines for carrying them out and monitoring progress. Institutional instances of this type only make sense if:
i. they are proposed by high-ranking authorities with decision-making power;
ii. they include not only the relevant sectors (food and agriculture, environment, industryor economy, health and education) but also political and financial authorities; and,especially
iii. if its mandate, composition and decisions have legal force and effects on the budget.
The institutional changes to be made to open space for a profound and successful rural transfor-mation should cover at least five complementary dimensions:
i. the social valorization of rural areas;
ii. the reform of the current Ministries or secretariats of agriculture;
iii. the reorientation of spending to favour the provision of public goods;
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iv. rural territorial development; and,
v. governance. Territorial rural development; and,
vi. governance and governability
5.1. Social valorization of rural areas
We affirm based on evidence that there will be no sustainable development without rural devel-opment, that is, that the future of the region as a whole depends to a great degree on the future of agriculture, food systems and rural areas. However, the fact is that societies and political actors in the region do not recognize rural areas as an engine of general development, and it is not un-common for them to associate it with a past that has to be overcome and a set of structural lags that hinder the progress of countries. It is enough to note that the countries of the region allocate fewer resources to agriculture (in relative terms, the weight of the sector in national GDP) than the countries of other developing regions, and much less than developed countries (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019).
The social revaluation of the environment and sustainability, the demand for a healthy diet and the growing demographic and economic weight of rural-urban territories in our region, are three pillars on which it is possible to build a new narrative and social consensus on the importance of rural areas for society and its development (Berdegué and Favareto 2019). If we fail in the construction of this new rural social identity, and leaders and urban societies do not recognize the role that the rural sector plays in their development, it will be very difficult to mobilize the political forces required to promote rural transformations.
To install a new rural narrative, a broad recognition of the contribution of rural areas to the development and welfare of each country in the region is necessary. Although the evidence, as shown in Sections 2.1 to 2.4, is compelling, in the current narrative the reading of backwardness predominates (Section 2.2), which, although it should be part of the larger narrative, should not be the only one, much less the predominant narrative.
Achieving a new rural narrative, which is adopted by leaders, elites and citizens, and that pro-motes new leadership, requires long-term efforts and concrete actions. The aim is to ensure that each citizen of of Latin America and the Caribbean is sensitive to the significant contribution that rural areas make to their quality of life and their possibilities for development, but also to the risks that are assumed when not meeting the demands that emanate from this area: risks associated with greater insecurity, illegality and violence, for example, the deepening of forced migrations from rural areas to cities, the loss of major sources of fresh water and diversity, or accelerated growth of diseases derived from poor diet.
To be able to install this new rural narrative requires work in different aspects from the cultural to the economic; it must be ensured that each citizen knows what is rural - the contents about rural activities in school textbooks, for example, are key - and the linkages of rural areas with their own life and well-being (origin of food, access to resources such as water and value of cultural diversity in their daily lives). At the same time, it requires a deliberate effort to strengthen rural organizations, their reach, their negotiation skills – including resources, content and responsi-bilities - and action in the public sphere, with the purpose of strengthening the presence of the
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rural in the decision-making schemes. It is not about idealizing rural organizations, but about recognizing them as complex and imperfect actors of rural development. In fact, public policy can also support processes and mechanisms that promote greater transparency and accountabil-ity among community organizations and their bases. The challenge of these public policies is to ensure that they are used to strengthen relations between the organization and its members and not to exercise political control over the organizations (Bebbington 2019).
5.2. Agri-food sector institutions for the 21st century
The agri-food institutions in most governments of the region were created in the 1950s and 1960s in order to contribute to a significant increase in national food production, in a context of increasing urbanization and industrialization. Between the 1980s and the 1990s, according to the Washington Consensus, a severe adjustment was carried out, which in most countries served to reduce the State’s presence in the sector rather than to create new institutions or modernize existing ones.64
The current institutional framework, resulting from these two processes, in the vast majority of countries is notoriously insufficient to govern with efficiency and effectiveness the economic, social and environmental processes of the agri-food sector.
Part of the response strategy should be the modernization of institutions in the agri-food sector. There are different alternatives to achieve this goal, and each country must identify the one that best responds to its conditions and objectives. There are two common proposals: to convert the traditional Ministries of Agriculture into Ministries of Food and Agriculture and the creation of Food Agencies as supra-sectoral entities with regulatory responsibilities. These two frequent institutional responses to the challenges of our time can be mutually exclusive or complementary (when the Agency is in charge of regulation and entrusts the execution mainly to the Ministry of Food). Any of these proposals – the creation of the Food Agency only, or the creation of a Food Ministry, or both simultaneously - face challenges in their implementation and none solves all the food and rural challenges at once.
Of course, every solution will have flaws, so it is important to ensure that the institutional option adopted has effective capacity in four key areas to be effective:
i. understand that in all dimensions of their work (economic, social, environmental), co-ordination with other government Ministries and agencies, as well as with civil societyand market actors, is indispensable.
ii. strengthen the regulatory function of the institution, instead of devoting their greatestefforts to the execution of programs and projects;
iii. develop a strong strategic intelligence capacity that ensures that policies are defined andimplemented based on rigorous evidence and analysis;
64 Although during this period some institutions of the agrarian sector were strengthened and modernized - like the entities responsible for animal and plant health, for example - their greatest efficiency was limited to their specialized work and they did not manage to build a complete service provision platform accessible to all. How-ever, studies reveal that the best service brought increases in productivity, prices and agricultural sales (López et al. 2017).
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iv. ensure effective instruments to mobilize budgets, and make administrative and planningdecisions that allow them to carry out their goals.
It should be noted that the transition from a ministry of agriculture to a ministry of food and agriculture involves a significant change in the non-state actors with whom the new en-tity is related. The current Ministries are mainly related with - and represent - actors in the agriculture sector. The new Ministries should expand their social counterparts, as befits the expansion of their mandate from agriculture to agriculture and food. The aim is to recognize, for example, consumers and food distribution actors in the formulation and implementation of public policies. That is, a relative de-agrarization of the ministry is proposed so that it can incorporate the entire food system. Obviously, this implies changes in the governance of sec-toral policies, derived from changes in the power relations of the actors that participate in the definition of policies.
The Ministries of food and agriculture must be responsible for ensuring that the activity of the agri-food sector is resilient and environmentally sustainable, for promoting the relation-ship between food and health (including, but going beyond issues of food safety), and for improving the social status of the majority of farmers in the region. In spite of the above, it is clear that the Ministries of agriculture and food cannot be held accountable for all those inherent objectives of contemporary agricultural activity.65 Or this reason, attention must be paid to the design of political, budgetary and administrative mechanisms that make coordi-nation the work norm, and not an exception as it is today.
The creation of a Food Agency at the highest level – supra-ministerial – should oversee the regulations that govern agri-food systems and generate political agreements and guidelines that the sub-national levels of government will then implement in the different sectors related to food. In addition, it must coordinate the necessary regulations with the legislative branch and generate mechanisms for monitoring and accountability of progress in implementation. These type of entities already exist in several countries for other issues, such as the promotion of private investment and holdings of public companies, among others. An agency of this nature could even include other political and technical actors as members, but it should be headed by a high level board, made up, for example, of ministers (and not by their represent-atives) including the Ministers of Finance, Social Development, Agriculture, Industry, Health and the Environment.
The institutional model chosen by each country, either from among those proposed here or others, will require effective institutional capacities to enforce the new rules and guidelines. Institutional weakness, which is a problem for a number of the countries in the region, means that regardless of the agri-food institutional scheme chosen, the agenda for strengthening enforcement capabilities is urgent in the region.
5.3. Public spending as an institutional issue
The actions required to take advantage of the ongoing changes to promote inclusive and sus-tainable rural development, particularly those related to the need for a new institutional frame-
65 As Gordillo (2019) points out, the new institutional design must take into account that the current private enti-ties - supermarket chains, investment banks, philanthropic entities, etc. - tend to define the policies towards the rural environment from the ground up, in response to the existing framework (and its gaps).
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work, require important changes in how public resources are allocated to agriculture, food systems and rural areas. Most of the proposals contained in this document to advance the achievement of the SDGs in rural areas require more public resources, better channels and more efficient schemes to implement them, as well as public-private coordination that allows the mobilization of private resources to meet rural demands.
Most of the public resources allocated to rural areas are channelled from central governments through different sectors. Among them, we tend to focus on spending in the agricultural sector to discuss rural spending, although the social sectors (health, education and social protection), infrastructure (irrigation, roads, telecommunications, water and sanitation, and energy) and the environment are an important source of public resources for rural development.
In addition to these public sectors, we must add the resources channelled through the sub-na-tional levels of government, whose relative importance varies considerably among the coun-tries depending on the progress of their decentralization strategies.66
As discussed in Section 4.1, ensuring universal basic social protection, complemented by tar-geted interventions to achieve economic autonomy for the rural population and basic infra-structure coverage, are minimum aspirations within the framework of the SDGs that will in-volve incremental budgetary demands (Winder and Faret 2019, Scott 2019, Fort 2019, Correa 2019). While social spending, and in particular social protection spending, in the region has grown since the 2000s, both as a percentage of GDP and in per capita terms, the universaliza-tion of a minimum level of social protection still requires additional effort.67
In any scheme that seeks not only to reduce the social backwardness in rural areas, but also to al-ter the mechanisms of reproduction of inequality, greater resources and additional interventions are required.68 hese resources must come from new tax revenues or savings in other expenses and their redirection towards rural areas. In terms of the first, Diaz-Bonilla and di Salvo (2019) dis-cuss the complex and necessary actions that must be taken to achieve changes in the sources of structural public revenues. As these authors point out, it is not only a technical issue, but above all a matter of political economy in the light of the new economic context of the region.69 The countries of the region have a pending challenge in terms of improving and expanding their tax systems, not only to raise more revenue, but to do it better: at less cost, more equitably, and to avoid disincentives for certain economic activities. It is important to analyze and overhaul the tax system in several countries of the region. Several tax discussions have important implications for rural transformation: the ratio of direct versus indirect taxes, taxes on unhealthy products 66 Public spending by sub-national governments accounts for an average of 6.2 percent of GDP in Latin Amer-
ica and the Caribbean and 19.2 percent of total government spending, with significant variation between countries (Brazil transfers 48 percent of its budget to sub-national levels, while Panama barely 2 percent) (Izquierdo et al. 2018).
67 According to information from ECLACSTAT, social spending (education, health, social protection, culture, housing, etc.) for 2016 was 11.2 percent of GDP for Latin America and 11.6 percent of GDP for the Caribbean (percentages greater than those of 2002), while social spending on social protection was 4.1 percent and 3.3 percent of GDP for Latin America and the Caribbean, respectively.
68 Izquierdo et al. (2018) present evidence of the limited impact that tax policy and spending on transfers have on the reduction of inequality.
69 Given the relatively high levels of indebtedness of most of the countries in the region and the lower eco-nomic growth projected for the coming years and the pro-cyclical behaviour of spending and incomes, it is increasingly important to resume discussions on tax reforms in the region (Díaz-Bonilla, 2019, Díaz-Bonilla and de Salvo, 2019, Izquierdo et al. 2018).
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(for example, as there are already in several countries on sugary drinks), land taxes and tax breaks, among many others.
Regarding the second source of resources for rural areas, to generate better strategies for the use of current public spending, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently published a study indicating that in Latin America and the Caribbean there is important potential for gov-ernments to spend more efficiently, without cutting services for the citizens that require them. These savings could generate resources equivalent to 4.4 percentage points of GDP on average in the region.70
Díaz-Bonilla and Saravia-Matus (2019) review the existing estimates of the incremental amount of expenditure and investment required to ensure compliance with the SDGs.71 They present partial estimates that account for the substantial effort required to mobilize resources for this purpose. For example, only in order to achieve SDG 2 compliance, an additional USD 1.7 billion is required (USD 1 billion in expanded social protection and USD 700 million in investments to improve production in rural areas).72
Díaz-Bonilla and Saravia-Matus (2019) propose that, in order to mobilize the resources re-quired from the public and private sectors to advance towards the achievement of the SDGs in rural areas, the following steps are required:
i. conduct a review of the expenditure that is currently allocated to the agri-food and en-ergy systems to ensure its relevance and effectiveness;
ii. renew the agenda on rural financing and the financing of value chains to ensure thatresources are mobilized to help rural areas achieve development and sustainability, and;
iii. create a fund that allows the preparation of investment projects and promotes pub-lic-private partnerships to finance these investments.
These three actions imply rethinking policies and small expenditures, but they are key to mo-bilizing and sustaining resources oriented towards the achievement of the SDGs in rural areas.
Moving on the food industry, it is important to recognize that any institutional reorganization of the sector will be useless without changes in the prevailing logic of sectoral public spending and, more generally, the fiscal situation of the sector (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019).
70 This amount is obtained from estimates derived from reducing losses in social transfers and waste in public purchases (inefficient purchases, poorly designed tenders and corruption), and reorganizing the remuner-ation of public employees in countries of the region. The amount of 4.4 percentage points represents the average saving for the region and hides differences between countries that vary between 7.2 percentage points in the case of Argentina, and 1.8 percentage points in Chile (Izquierdo et al. 2018).
71 The most recent estimate calculates the total cost between USD 3.08 trillion and USD 4.503 trillion (based on ECLAC 2019). For its part, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the additional annual expenditure needed by emerging economies to achieve the SDGs, on average, is equivalent to 4 percentage points of GDP and 15 percentage points of GDP for low-income countries (IMF). 2019).
72 Data obtained from the FAO, IFAD and WFP (2015).
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Figure 10. Public expenditure in the agricultural sector, relative to value-added agriculture in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (three-year average).
Source: Díaz– Bonilla and de Salvo, (2019), with data from Agrimonitor database, IDB (2018).
We start from the observation that, in the coming years, macroeconomic conditions will discourage important expansions of public spending, and that, therefore, the central discussion is how to use the public resources already available to the sector.73 Díaz-Bonilla and de Salvo (2019) state that, on average for the region, public spending on agriculture is equivalent to 8 percent of the sector’s GDP, or USD 19 billion annually. However, as shown in Figure 10, this average hides important differences between countries. Thus, public expenditure in Guatemala represents only 1.2 percent of sector GDP, while Peru, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are the countries with the highest level of spending (26.4 percent, 44.7 percent and 58 percent of agricultural GDP, respectively).
The regional average of the Agricultural Orientation Index (AOI) of public expenditure74 fluc-tuated between 0.31 and 0.37 during the period 2001 to 2017. In comparison, this indica-tor averaged 1.25 in developed countries (2010-2015) and 0.38 in developing countries. This means that governments in the region invest far less in agriculture than agriculture contributes to the national economy, even compared to other developing regions.
The public budget is not the only form of support for agriculture. The Producer Support Estimate varies75 , from negative values in Argentina (the country extracts resources from the sector) to 88 percent of agricultural GDP in Trinidad and Tobago (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019). Public funding in countries of the Southern Cone (excluding Argentina) represents between 5 percent and 9 percent of GDP in the sector, compared to 22 percent in Central America and 38 percent in the Caribbean. In many countries, the support based on regulations that affect prices is more important than transfers received through the public budget for agriculture. 73 In addition, it is necessary to develop instruments and mechanisms that allow the countries of the region to
access global resources to support development and sustainability processes (public and private funds). This requires not only actions to mobilize these resources towards our countries, but to ensure that countries have the key institutions for such mobilization (effective development banks, adequate regulations, etc.).
74 This is defined as public agricultural expenditure as a percentage of total public expenditure, relative to agri-cultural GDP as a percentage of total GDP. A value greater than 1 indicates that the country spends more on agriculture than agriculture contributes to the economy, and a value less than 1 suggests that the country is in-vesting less in agriculture with respect to its weight in the national economy (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019).
75 The Price Support Estimate (PSE) is calculated according to a methodology developed by the OECD, which in the region is applied by the IDB Agrimonitor initiative. It measures total transfers to producers and con-
Gráfico 10. Gasto público en el sector agrícola, relativo al valor agregado en la agricultura en países de América Latina y el Caribe (promedio trienal)
Fuente: Díaz–Bonilla y de Salvo (2019), con datos Agrimonitor database, IDB (2018).
0
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40
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70
GT HT AR EC CR HN DO PY CO PN BO UY NI BR SV CL BZ SR BH JM GY MX PE BA TT
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Figure 11. Composition of public spending on agriculture (three-year average) Source: Díaz–Bonilla and de Salvo (2019), with data from Agrimonitor database, IDB (2018).
The IDB Agrimonitor data (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019) allow us to review the composition of public expenditure. In 16 countries of the region76, the private subsidies component exceeds 40 percent of the
total sector budget, well above what is assigned to the provision of public goods, such as research, in-spection and control or infrastructure (see Figure 11). Research such as Allcot et al. (2006) and Anríquez et al. (2016) has shown that spending on private subsidies is not only regressive, but also has a negative effect on sectoral growth, compared to investment in public goods. Anríquez et al. (2016) even conclude that increasing the sectoral budget, without modifying its composition, has very limited effects on the income of producers, while transferring 10 percentage points from the budget, from private subsidies to public goods, increases the income of farmers by 5 percent, an effect that can only be achieved with a 25 percent increase in the total budget in a scenario in which the distribution of expenditure remains constant (Díaz-Bonilla and de Salvo, 2019).
In summary, although with some differences between countries, the region has a problem of insufficient public spending on agriculture, a relatively high level of price distorting support measures, inefficient use of subsidies and, most importantly, insufficient financing of public goods essential for agri-food and rural development, due to the capture of the budget by privileged sectors that receive important amounts of private subsidies. The reform of sectoral public spending is clearly one of the most important, and most sensitive, pending institutional transformations.
This reform must occur within the context of a macroeconomic program that maintains a fiscal balance and avoids by all means the overvaluation of the exchange rate, which significantly reduces the possibility
sumers resulting from public spending or interventions that affect prices, such as tariffs, import quotas, export incentives, etc. (Díaz-Bonilla and Salvo 2019).
76 Belize, Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic.
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of economic crises, and ensures that internationally tradable products (which includes the majority of ag-ricultural exports and imports) are not placed at a competitive disadvantage, generating pressure for com-pensatory trade protection measures. This program also needs a monetary framework that ensures moder-ate to low inflation, but with flexibility to absorb external shocks and with interest rates that do not lead to an appreciation of the exchange rate, volatility in the flow of capital and fragility in the banking system (Díaz-Bonilla, 2015, 2019). A solid, sustainable and consistent macroeconomic framework will become increasingly important in an international context marked by economic and geopolitical uncertainties.
5.4. Territorial strategies and policies
The strategy outlined in this document for the transformation of agriculture, food systems and rural areas, framed within the SDGs, far exceeds the scope, mandate and capacities of any ministry, however effective it may be, and involves entities from many sectors of government. Moreover, this transformation requires the will and actions of market agents and civil society. Finally, it is unthinkable that the suggested agenda could be carried out throughout the entire territory of any country, from top to bottom and uniformly; the starting points, restrictions and possible strategic paths of each territory will be different. Therefore, the role and effort of the sector must include a strong territorial component.
Berdegué and Favareto (2019) have made a critical review of the first two decades of application of the rural territorial development (RTD) approach in the region. Based on this, they propose that, at present, the RTD in the region requires six adjustments to realize its potential:
i. overcome sectoral agendas and propose the prioritization of the SDGs in the territory;
ii. establish as an objective promoting new paths of economic growth that focus on envi-ronmental conservation and social cohesion;
iii. prioritize the building of territorial intelligence and technical and political capacities ofthe territory;
iv. incorporate rural priorities in the institutional architecture of governments;
v. promote innovation in mechanisms that help to resolve coordination failures; and;
vi. empower the actors of the territories to have authority and capacities for the manage-ment of their development processes.
The strengthening of effective capacities for rural territorial development at different levels of government is not incompatible or exclusive of the role and effort of participants in the sector. On the contrary, rural territories with actors all working based on a shared strategic vision and with the capacities to carry it out, would help to improve the results of certain sectoral policies.77
5.5. Governance
The strategy proposed in this document implies a significant change in terms of the actors in-volved in developing policies for agriculture, food systems and rural areas. If only for this reason, it is necessary to rethink the process of interaction between state and non-state actors, in order
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to adopt effective policies related to the agri-food and rural agenda that can be implemented successfully (WB 2017).
New governance is required for rural transformation.78 As Gordillo (2019) points out: “a new governance implies a significant transfer of power within central governments, and from these to state and municipal authorities, as well as between and within state actors and non-state actors.”
It is, therefore, an eminently political process. As noted in the 2017 World Development Report (WB 2017), the change in governance can occur through a combination of elite ne-gotiations, citizen participation and international influence. If we think, for example, of the progressive adoption of environmental regulations in Latin American and Caribbean agri-culture, we can see these three elements of change at work. The formation of transformative coalitions between rural and urban, state and non-state, territorial, national and global actors can accelerate changes in governance (Gordillo 2019, Penagos and Ospina 2019, Berdegué and Favareto 2019).
As indicated by Berdegué and Favareto (2019), one of the essential conditions for achieving this new governance is the empowerment of territorial actors. Empowering actors in rural terri-tories implies giving them greater autonomy to make decisions, but also resources so that they can do so and demands for accountability to support their greater power of action. The commitment to change in rural governance also requires recognizing the diversity of actors and the role played by traditionally invisible groups in decision-making processes, particularly groups of Afro and indigenous descent. It is not just about ensuring that these groups have a voice and visibility, but also generating new rules that, in addition to avoiding the current discriminatory schemes, recognize and value their demands, contributions, organizations and property systems from an intercultural perspective, and help them obtain access to resources to manage their territories.79
One of the main effects of a new system of governance must be to deepen democracy and the rule of law in rural areas, as these areas tend to have a deficit of democratic governance. Inadequate governance, in a context of great inequalities (economic, social, territorial), has repercussions for state policies and decisions that are not considered acceptable by territorial or national non-state actors, which leads, as we have seen in Section 2.4, to numerous conflicts of different types that often cannot be resolved through democratic and peaceful means or formal institutional channels for conflict management.
One of the most nefarious and damaging expressions of the institutional deficit is the crim-inalization of social movements and violence against their leaders. Between 2009 and 2018, according to the work of Tierra de Resistentes, 1 356 acts of violence - murders, judicial har-assment, forced displacement, etc. - were identified (and documented) against people defend-ing their lands and natural resources.80 In this regard, in cases of internal armed conflict, such 77 Berdegué and Favareto (2019) review four systems that allow this coordination between sectoral and terri-
torial actors based on the experience of our region.
78 The World Bank (2017, 3) has defined governance as “the process of interaction between state and non-state actors to formulate and apply policies, within the framework of a set of formal and informal rules that shape power and are shaped by it ... power is defined as the ability of certain groups and people to make others act in their interests, and to achieve specific results.”
79 Bebbington (2019, 6) emphasizes that community organizations at the local level are always important actors because their members have a privileged understanding of how the problems they experience in daily life are generated, and can communicate this experience to other public and private actors to help develop new policies.
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as those in Peru and Colombia in recent decades, a significant percentage of the victims lived in rural areas.81,82 Finally, the exponential growth of mining activity in the region has been associat-ed with hundreds of conflicts in rural areas where mining operations are located.83 This raises the issue of respect for basic human rights (the right to life, freedom of opinion, organization, social and political participation) of the people and communities threatened or affected. In addition, where the rule of law has been replaced by criminal violence, economic growth, environmental protection and social inclusion are not possible.
Violence in rural territories is not restricted to confrontations between communities and state or private actors in terms of access to and use of natural resources and land. Violence is the main cause of death among youth in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, we know very little about this process in rural areas, since the focus has been on urban contexts and the emergence of gangs. In addition, none of the indicators of violence that are usually used are disaggregated by rural and urban geographic area (Díaz-Bonilla 2015).
Vast territories in many countries of our region have been taken over by criminal gangs to carry out lucrative illegal businesses that include illicit crops, illegal mining and logging, illegal, unreg-ulated and unreported fishing, as well as blackmail, kidnapping and human trafficking (Escobar and Rico 2019). In 2003, the value of the illegal drug trade reached USD 321.6 billion (UN-ODC 2005, 127), while illegal fishing is worth USD 23.5 billion annually (Flores-Nava 2019).
Millions of rural inhabitants of the region live in environments dominated by actors involved in these illegal activities. The effects of these illegal activities on territorial economies, the en-vironment and democracy and the rule of law are devastating (Escobar and Rico 2019), but they also constitute a disincentive to investment in rural territories (Pomareda 2019). A new governance for rural transformation should aim to contain and solve the problem of violence and illegal economies in Latin American and Caribbean rural areas, ensuring not only the presence of the State in the territories, but also attacking corruption, encouraging territorial development, providing infrastructure and quality public services, formalizing and strength-ening property rights and improving systems for data collection and use of information to act effectively and with integrity and transparency (Escobar and Rico 2019).
Agriculture, food systems and the rural areas of our region are already subject to the powerful effects of three enormous drivers of change: climate change, new food demands and ongoing technological revolutions. What future awaits them? To an important extent, the answer will 80 Tierra de Resistentes (online), based on the work of 30 journalists in seven countries in the region, identified and
documented these cases. Of the 1 356 acts of violence, 1 179 were against defenders of their lands and natural resources and 177 against communities; 57 percent of those affected are members of indigenous and Afro-de-scendant communities. In addition, the study found 136 cases of violence against Afro-descendant communities.
81 The final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR 2003) estimates that around half a million people left their homes in search for refuge between 1980 and 2000. Rural communities were the most affected: “approximately 70 percent of all internally displaced persons in Peru belong to peasant communities and communities of rural and indigenous origin, which are groups that maintain a special rela-tionship with their lands and territories” (UN 1996, 23).
82 Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced persons worldwide. According to the Registry of Victims, between 1985 and 2016, 7 779 858 displaced persons were registered in Colombia. Of these, 89 percent of the victims lived in rural areas, meaning that 9 out of 10 displaced people in Colombia were from rural areas. Hence, the impact is greater in rural communities and indigenous and Afro-descendant commu-nities (CNMH 2015), with victims predominantly moving from rural to urban areas.
83 According to EJAtlas (online), there were at least 296 mining conflicts registered in the region as of 2018, half of them concentrated in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile.
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6. Conclusion: Eight challenges for
rural transformation
depend on the strategy adopted by Latin American and Caribbean countries, and the region as a whole, to take advantage of and respond to these drivers of change.
One option is to not interfere and let the transformations take their current course. This is, it seems to us, the worst option, because it is the one that probably maximizes the costs and minimizes the benefits of the inevitable transformations. This strategy, which is that of blind faith, involves an inexcusable failure to try to lead our development, and an abdication of our responsibilities to future generations.
Another option is resistance, by hoping that in some way we can continue with more or less the same policies, the same business models, the same institutional and social arrangements, and that these will be sufficiently solid and effective to navigate the catalysts of change that we have identified in this document. This strategy, of sticking to the status quo, has many followers, mainly those who are or feel like winners under the current rules of the game.
A third alternative is to embrace rural transformation, with all its uncertainties and risks, seeking to mitigate its negative externalities and its inevitable costs and taking advantage of the enormous opportunities that are open to us if we manage to guide change towards sustainable development. This is the alternative proposed in this document. However, this option involves an important assumption: that we are capable, in each country and the region, of making the agreements that, little by little, will shape a new model of agricultural, food and rural development. In a democracy, we have learned that for important changes to be solid and lasting, they must be based on broad agreements that express the will of social and political majorities, which, while respecting minorities, legitimize and confer sufficient power to development strategies. We al-ready have a very important starting point, which is the consensus and global commitment to the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. However, even with that definition, it is evident in the planet and in our region that we are living at a time of great tensions caused by centrifugal forces that question agreements and basic arrangements that we took for granted. This generates an inter-national context in which the absence of stable and consolidated global models makes the task of building the necessary agreements to better facilitate rural transformation more complex, but also more necessary, and even inevitable for each country and for the region.
We conclude this document by proposing eight challenges about which our countries will have to make decisions, in order to build their rural transformation strategy in the direction of sus-tainable development. We are fully aware that these dilemmas are interdependent, and that in each of them there are different types and degrees of response; democratic agreements are more feasible if we move away from dichotomous positions that often lead to zero-sum solutions. We believe there is a need for dialogue regarding the following challenges to build social and political agreements necessary for rural transformation:
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1. The role of agriculture, food systems and rural areas in the future of Latin America and
the Caribbean
In this document we have proposed that agriculture, food systems and rural area enrich our region in many dimensions and that they have central and irreplaceable functions in sustain-able development. But that is not the dominant view among the political, economic, social and cultural elites of our countries, which for at least the last eight decades have considered everything related to rural areas to be synonymous with backwardness, underdevelopment and a past from which we must move away so that our countries can progress. The cultural, social and political repositioning of rural areas in the narrative of development and the future of Latin America and the Caribbean is a necessary condition for the existence of powerful rural transformation strategies.
The necessary recognition of this sector cannot only be discursive. The revaluation of the rural sector (its people, social diversity, economic contribution, cultural heritage and ecosystems) must be confirmed by its increasing priority in political agendas and in the allocation of re-sources of all kinds.
2. The ecological transition
Few still doubt that agriculture, food systems and rural areas have to become more resilient and environmentally sustainable. But there are important differences regarding the numerous decisions associated with the application of that principle. Our societies will have to decide how much agriculture, food systems and rural areas are asked to contribute to sustainability, resil-ience, the mitigation of climate change, conservation of ecosystems and environmental services. And, importantly, how much they are willing to invest in such an ecological transition.
The worst way to face this dilemma would be to see the ecological transition of agriculture, food systems and rural areas only as a problem or cost to society. The way in which this dilemma is framed will have a direct impact on the form and degree to which countries will be able to realize the enormous opportunities for innovation and growth associated with new industries (new products, services and markets) as part of more sustainable economies. With our rich rural heritage: environmental, biodiversity, renewable energies, oceans, environmental services and the bioeconomy, this sector can be for Latin America and the Caribbean in the 21st century, what oil and minerals were in the last century. But this will not fall from the sky and involves important decisions on policies, investments and regulations.
In such an economy, there are enormous opportunities for social inclusion of indigenous and afro-descendant peoples and family farmers, who control vast natural resources and have knowl-edge and a cultural background that has much to contribute to a more sustainable economy. Rural youth clearly have much more interest in building life strategies associated with the envi-ronment and sustainability, than simply reproducing those of their parents. 3. Healthy eating
There is an undeniable crisis of malnutrition on the planet, at a time when the world is more capable than ever of producing food and taking it from one corner of the globe to another. It is a crisis derived from a nutritional transition to less healthy diets (and ways of life). The epidemic
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of obesity and overweight, which is the most serious manifestation of this crisis, is linked to the food systems of our region.
The region of Latin America and the Caribbean has extraordinary conditions to be a central ac-tor in the solution of this food crisis. With its enormous agro-ecological diversity, the region can be a privileged provider of healthy foods for the world, from our agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and food processing industry. In addition, given its levels of urbanization and infrastructure, the development of its food supply and distribution systems, the coverage of its educational and social protection systems, and the relative strength of its institutions in the context of develop-ing countries, the region can help to lead an increase in access to healthy foods for the entire population.
However, realizing this opportunity means changing the objective that has been the basis of the food system over the last eight decades, which is to produce more food at lower cost, to ensuring that we all have access to healthy foods. Achieving this goal involves a huge effort of innovation and new investments in production, trade, the food processing industry, food environments and consumption. The decision of whether to change our agriculture and food systems in that direction cannot be taken for granted.
4. A more diversified rural economy
For decades, the region has been diversifying its rural economies. However, public policies are almost exclusively oriented towards forestry, fishing and mining production. The dilem-ma is whether to continue with the same policies or to develop, in addition, new drivers of development focused on rural areas: tourism, renewable energies, environmental services and conservation, new services and those branches of the bioeconomy that require more innovation and added value. This demands more and better rule of law in rural areas to contain the effect of inequalities on public decisions, incentives for innovative investments, support for young entrepreneurs and their ventures, development and opening of markets, and a marked effort to strengthen rural-urban linkages including through the development of intermediate cities. As resources are always limited, seriously considering the above implies complex decisions about public investments required to create favourable environments for private investment.
5. Technological innovation
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was an important public effort in the region to support scientific research and technological innovation, focus in those years on agricultural development. In recent decades, that capital has dried up and has stopped being renewed, with some notable exceptions that show how much can be achieved when there is a government commitment to science and technology. The affirmation that, if the state withdrew from research and technolog-ical innovation, the private sector would occupy this space with better results and with greater efficiency has been flatly denied by reality. The dilemma is whether the region will embark on an in-depth commitment to innovation based on science and technology, and whether the state will play its role or not. Rural transformation for sustainable development is simply not possible in the absence of a for-midable effort of public and private innovation, and this is not possible without a very significant increase in public investment in science and technology. This requires national strategies formu-lated and implemented with the participation of a wide range of governmental and non-govern-mental actors, which will not see the light if the state does not assume a leadership role.
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6. Social inclusion and social protection
In this document we have pointed out that broad sectors of rural societies live, generation after generation, in a situation of poverty and vulnerability. As part of the social and political defi-nitions of rural transformation, we should question whether we will continue on a path that is mainly based on social protection or if, alternatively, a social inclusion agreement is reached based on giving a real opportunity to vulnerable social sectors to build livelihoods that allow people to create or access jobs and enterprises to sustain an increase in their incomes and expand their opportunities. The question, in short, is whether countries are committed to ensuring the mini-mum level of support for these social groups to subsist or the minimum level for them to develop.
Behind this question lies another one, which is whether or not the decision-makers involved in rural policies and investments believe, as we do, that it is possible for rural social groups that have lived for generations in a situation of poverty and vulnerability (large sectors of family farming, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, rural landless labourers, women and youth) can help to build an autonomous and sustainable space for their economic development.
7. Reducing structural inequalities
The rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean are not only characterized by their high incidence of monetary and multidimensional poverty. They also face structural inequalities that are deeply rooted in our history: the high concentration of land ownership and ethnic, gender, and territorial inequalities are perhaps the most important of these. These inequalities deter-mine access to all types of public and private assets, goods and services beyond and in addition to the effects of poverty. Poverty reduction strategies can coexist perfectly with the maintenance and reproduction of these structural inequalities, and this has implicitly been the predominant (although not exclusive) strategy in the region during the last few decades at least.
The question, then, is what place does overcoming structural inequalities have in the strategy of rural transformation? This raises other questions about ethnic and gender discrimination, such as whether these populations should be effectively guaranteed the same rights enjoyed by those who do not belong to them, and the degree to which countries are committed to the develop-ment of lagging territories or to the migration of the population to other places with greater opportunities. There are also questions about whether those who live on the land should have expanded access to it, and about which institutional changes (that is, the rules of the game) would make all of the above possible.
8. Institutional reform
Public institutions in agriculture, food systems and rural areas emerged in the post-war decades to face challenges that are markedly different from those of the contemporary world. The Wash-ington Consensus strategy was effective in eliminating many of those institutions and in creating some new ones (especially those relevant to openness and participation in international markets). As discussed in this document, the net result is a very incomplete, inefficient and increasingly incompetent institutional framework for making public, private and social decisions required for rural transformation. In truth, it is hard to find any sector in any country in the region that believes the current institutional framework is what we need today or, even less so, tomorrow.
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The dilemma of whether to build new institutional arrangements for rural transformation, or to continuing to patch up what we have now, is expressed in many diverse questions. For example: How do we promote more public-private collaboration? How can the sectors whose actions are relevant for agricultural, food and rural development be coordinated? How can socio-environ-mental conflicts be managed and resolved? How are attributions and relationships between na-tional governments and territories defined, and how can a balance be achieved between sectoral and territorial development? How can urban-rural linkages be strengthened? How can private investment be encouraged, and what are its limits in the face of environmental, social or territo-rial threats? How can increasingly powerful new economic, financial and technological actors be regulated given their important impact on agriculture, food systems and rural areas of the region, but which are alien to them and are often actors whose decisions and strategies are beyond the reach of national governments? How can certain countries be prevented from imposing condi-tions that violate international agreements and that impede or limit the access of our producers and entrepreneurs to their markets? What space and legal recognition do the institutions, prac-tices and ancestral customs of indigenous peoples have in our societies? How should countries coordinate to govern transboundary processes, such as migration, climate change, violence in rural areas derived from illegal economies, or pollution of the oceans and depredation of fisheries?
Nobody could say without blushing that our current institutional frameworks are capable of answering any of these questions. Therefore, the decisions made about institutional reforms will largely determine the possibility, meaning and results of rural transformation.
In the decisions that are made (or not made) related to each of these challenges, there will be multiple interests and priorities at stake. Building the necessary agreements to carry out a rural transformation for sustainable development will be a process with tensions and conflicts. It will clearly be a political rather than a technical process, because technical knowledge is needed to define what is possible, but it is up to policymakers to decide what should be done. Fortunately, in our region this process will be experienced mainly in democratic contexts, which means that thousands of actors will have the space to participate, each with their own interests.
Today, the development strategy that was responsible for the major regional decisions made since the 1980s is being called into question - it was eroded by the 2007-2008 crisis and, more recent-ly, has been attacked by authorities in many of the same countries that initially promoted and imposed it. We are in the midst of what some call a trade and technological cold war between the United States and China, which will have effects that are unforeseeable today, but are of enor-mous consequence for our region. Meanwhile, our region is experiencing divisions that make it more difficult to reach agreements for concerted action in this troubled global environment. It is possible that the international context will continue to offer many uncertainties in the coming years, until a new socio-political model emerges.
But all of this does not mean that the effects of climate change, changes in food supply and the technological revolution are suspended. We are feeling them and will continue to feel them, with us, without us, or against us. We cannot wait for a better time to carry out the rural trans-formation in the region.
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N° Title Authors
1Transformación rural: pensando el futuro en América Latina y el Caribe
Carolina Trivelli y Julio A. Berdegué
2 Nueva definición de lo rural en América Latina y el Caribe Martine Dirven
3 Lo rural y el desarrollo sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe Silvia Saravia-Matus y Pablo Aguirre Hörmann
4 Tendencias globales que afectan lo rural Martin Piñeiro
5Large scale forces, global tendencies and rural actores in the light of the SDG goals John WIlkinson
6An Inclusive Rural Transformation in Progress, but with Un-equal Pace and characteristics across countries Rui Benfica
7Macroeconomic policies and agriculture and rural develop-ment Eugenio Diaz Bonilla
8Fiscal Policies and Producer Support Estimates in Latin Ameri-ca and the Caribbean
Eugenio Diaz Bonilla y Carmine Paolo de Salvo
9Estado y perspectivas de los recursos naturales y los ecosiste-mas en América Latina y el Caribe
Sandra Durango, Leidi Sierra, Marcela Quintero, Erwan Sachet, Paula Paz, Mayesse Da Silva, Jeffer-son Valencia, Jean Fran-cois Le Coq
10Situación rural de América Latina y el Caribe con 2 grados de calentamiento.
Andy Jarvis, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Deissy Martinez-Baron, Steve Prager, Julian Ramirez- Villegas, Anton Eitzinger, Lorna Born, Carlos Gonazlez, Jaime Tarapues
11Nuevos patrones alimentarios, más desafíos para los sistemas alimentarios
Ricardo Rapallo y Rodrigo Rivera
12 Transformar los sistemas alimentarios para alcanzar los ODS Joao Intini, Estelle Jacq y David Torres
13Innovación, agregación de valor y diferenciación: estrategias para el sector agroalimentario de América Latina y el Caribe en un mundo complejo
Adrián Rodríguez, Mónica Rodrigues, Octavio Soto-mayor y Paul Wander
14Current Status of agriculture in the Caribbean and implications for Agriculture Policy and Strategy FAO
15Agricultura familiar: de los conceptos a las políticas públicas en ALC
Catia Grisha y Eric Sabourin
16Contexto, Perspectivas y Retos para Incrementar la contribu-ción de la pesca y la acuicultura a la SAN y las economías ter-ritoriales en ALC
Alejandro Flores-Nava
17 Agrarian Structure in Latin America Michael Albertus
18 Empleo Rural No Agrícola en América Latina Eduardo Ramirez
19Los sistemas de investigación y transferencia de tecnología agropecuaria de América Latina en el marco de los nuevos escenarios de ciencia y tecnología
Eduardo Trigo y Pablo Elverdin
20Inversión privada en el medio rural y compromisos con los Ob-jetivos de Desarrollo Sostenibles Carlos Pomareda
Appendix 1: Documents prepared in the framework of the Regional Reflection on the Future of Agriculture, Food Systems and Rural Development in Latin America and the Caribbean
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21 Infraestructura rural mínima para prosperar Ricardo Fort
22Hacia garantías mínimas de protección social para el desarrollo incluyente de la economía rural en América Latina y el Caribe
Natalia Winder y Pablo Faret
23Mujeres rurales, protección social y seguridad alimentaria en América Latina y el Caribe
Claudia Brito Y Catalina Ivanovic
24 Pueblos Indígenas y población afrodescendiente Norma Correa
25 Barreras a la movilidad social rural en América Latina John Scott
26 Migración y Desarrollo rural en América Latina y el Caribe Fernando Soto y Andre Saramago
27La producción y explotación ilegales de materias primas en las zonas rurales de América Latina y sus líneas de impacto en el desarrollo territorial
Mariana Escobar y Daniel Rico
28Organizaciones comunitarias que resuelven problemas comu-nitarios Anthony Bebbington
29Plataformas cogestionadas y red de redes: nuevas formas de prestación de servicios para implementar la agenda 2030
Adrián Rodríguez, Mónica Rodrigues, Octavio Soto-mayor y Paul Wander
30Cooperación y conflicto: actores, coaliciones Gustavo Gordillo
31La Agenda 2030 y la transformación de los territorios rurales: un desafío para institucionalidad latinoamericana
Ángela Penagos y Claudia Ospina
32 Desarrollo Territorial Rural en América Latina y el Caribe Julio A. Berdegué y Arilson Favareto
33Los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible y el desarrollo rural en América Latina y el Caribe: Reflexiones sobre costos y finan-ciamientos
Eugenio Díaz–Bonilla y Silvia Saravia–Matus
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Acemoglu, D. y Restrepo, P. 2018. Artificial in-telligence, automation and work. Working Paper nº 24 196. Cambridge. National Bureau of Eco-nomic Research.
AgFunderNews. 2016. China is Ready for an Agri-Food Revolution. Fecha de consulta: 5 de mayo de 2019. https://agfundernews.com/chi-na-ready-agri-food-revolution.html
Albertus, M. 2019. Agrarian Structure in Latin America. Serie 2030 – Food, agriculture and rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean, No 17. Santiago de Chile. FAO.
Albrieu, R., López, A. y Rozenwurcel, G. 2013. Recursos naturales y el retorno de la agenda del desarrollo en América del Sur. Serie Policy Brief nº 9. Montevideo. Red Sudamericana de EconomíaAplicada.
Alexandratos, N. y Bruinsma, J. 2012. World agriculture towards 2030/2050: the 2012 revision. ESA Working Paper nº 12-03. Roma. FAO.
Angulo, R., Solano, A. y Tamayo, A. 2018. La po-breza rural en América Latina: qué dicen los indica-dores sobre la población indígena afrodescendiente de la región. Serie Documentos de Trabajo nº 246. Lima. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) y FAO.
Anríquez, G., Foster, W., Ortega, J., Falconi, C. y de Salvo, C.P. 2016. Public expenditures and the performance of Latin American and Caribbean ag-riculture. BDI Working Paper Series nº 722. Nueva York. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID).
Baca, M., Läderach, P., Haggar, J., Schroth, G. y Ovalle, O. 2014. An Integrated Framework for As-sessing Vulnerability to Climate Change and De-veloping Adaptation Strategies for Coffee Growing Families in Mesoamerica. PLoS ONE 9(2).
Banco Mundial (BM). 2006. Repositioning Nu-trition as Central to Development: A Strategy for Large-Scale Action. Washington, D.C. Banco Mundial. Disponible en: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7409/347750PAPER0Re101OFFICIAL0USE0ON-LY1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
BM. 2008. Informe sobre el desarrollo mundi-al 2008: Agricultura para el desarrollo. Bogotá. Banco Mundial y Mayol Ediciones S.A. Dis-ponible en: http://passthrough.fw-notify.net/download/862453/http://siteresources.world-bank.org/INTIDM2008INSPA/Resources/IN-FORME-SOBRE-EL-DESARROLLO-MUN-DIAL-2008.pdf
BM. 2011. The Changing Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the New Millennium. Washington, D.C. Banco Mundi-al. Disponible en: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/630181468339656734/pdf/588470PUB0Weal101public10BOX353816B.pdf
BM. 2017. Informe sobre el desarrollo mundial 2017: La gobernanza y las leyes, cuadernillo del “Panorama general”. Washington, D.C. Banco Mundial. Disponible en: http://www.iri.edu.ar/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ri53SGdocumen-tosBM4-Informe-sobre-el-desarrollo-mundi-al-2017-La-gobernanza-y-las-leyes.pdf
BM. 2018. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle. Washing-ton, D.C. Banco Mundial. Disponible en: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/han-dle/10986/30418/9781464813306.pdf
BM. Sin fecha(a). World Development Indica-tors. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added (constant 2010 US$). Fecha de consulta: 20 de abril de 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indica-tor/NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS
BM. Sin fecha(b). The Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Equity and Resilience. Fecha de con-sulta: 22 de abril de 2019. http://databank.world-bank.org/Data/Views/VariableSelection/SelectVaria-bles.aspx?source=1229
Bebbington, A. 2019. Organizaciones comuni-tarias que resuelven problemas comunitarios. Serie 2030 - Alimentación, agricultura y desarrollo rural en América Latina y el Caribe, No. 28. Santiago de Chile. FAO.
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