Globalization, poverty and familiar agriculture

Abstract

In the last two decades, the main factor that has shaped the society and rural economy of Latin America has been the change in the development model from one based on import substitution and internal industrialization to another based on external openness, export promotion and liberalization. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the adoption by most of the region's countries of structural adjustment programs stimulated agricultural exports in the hope that this would improve the trade situation. At the same time, the opening of the economies led to an increase in food imports from the most competitive countries in the supply of these products. As a result, the primary agricultural export sector has grown faster than production for the domestic market.