This is a CTP of initiative: La Via Campesina/MNCI (Argentina)
In December 2014, the national congress passed the law 27,118 of "Historical repair of family agriculture for the construction of a new rurality in Argentina".
The MNCI considers this law as the result of the joint work of the entire peasant movement during the last decade. The MNCI participated actively with other peasant organizations in the elaboration of the law. In 2012, Emilio Pérsico, a referent of social movements in Argentina, assumed the position of undersecretary of family agriculture. With him, a member of the MNCI (Ramiro Fresneda) was appointed in the Directorate of support to family agriculture organizations. Thus, for the first time in its history, the Argentine peasant movement went from protest and reclamation to the management and generation of solutions to its own problems.
For the MNCI, the law represented a fundamental step to generate significant changes in the rural structure of the country:
"Is an important step forward in the construction of a more inclusive agricultural project, which protects the most vulnerable sectors of our people, not only in economic but also social and environmental terms and in the framework of the new Rurality."
To do this, the law proposes a series of concrete actions to address some key issues such as access to land:
The law considers land as a social good and proposes the creation of a Land Bank for Family Farming, composed of lands owned by the National State. It also promoted the property Regularization, by which the Ministry of Agriculture must implement a specific and permanent program for the survey, analysis and comprehensive approach to the land situation of Family, peasant and Indigenous Agriculture. Likewise, the law establishes the suspension for three years of all eviction orders of family farmers.
In terms of production and commercialization processes, the law indicates actions for the conservation and improvement of soils and other natural resources, prioritizing agroecological practices. Preservation and recovery, artisan and scale multiplication, provision and access of native seeds. Processes of local industrialization and the formation of a national chain of commercialization. Family farmers registered in the National Registry of Family Agriculture (RENAF, in its Spanish initials) will have absolute priority in the direct contracting carried out by the National State for the provision of food in Hospitals, Schools, Community kitchens, National Penitentiary System, Army and other Public Institutions dependent on the National State. To this end, management agreements must be signed with the different jurisdictions in order to set goals and objectives to be met.
In Argentina, after 2008, the family farming sector began to take a greater place in public policy. Officially, since 2005 Argentina participates in regional spaces to establish common policies for this sector, but it is after the big political crisis generated by the lockout of the big farming associations in 2008, that it is institutionalized very fast. In this context, organizations that nucleate multiple peasant, indigenous and family-based associations - such as the Federation of Family Agriculture Organizations (FONAF, in its spanish initials), the National Indigenous Peasant Movement (MNCI, in its spanish initials) and the National Peasant Front (FNC, in its spanish initials), Among others - began to raise the need for a National Law for Family Farming.
Thus, with the participation of numerous peasant and rural organizations including the MNCI, the FONAF, the Indigenous Peasant Assembly of the North of Argentina, the FNC, the Federation of Small Producers of the Chaco, the Peasant Liberation Movement and the Agrarian Movement of Misones, The National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Argentina, the Agrarian Front Evita and the Rural Women Association; And the legislative role of Deputy Claudia Giaccone and deputy Carlos Rubín of the Front for the Victory of the provinces of Santa Fe and Corrientes respectively, who presented the bill, which was first approved in December 2014.
The law was the result of a co-production process that included peasant organizations, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, and national legislators. But it was also a response to the tensions generated by the expansion of agribusiness as the dominant agricultural production system in the last 20 years in Argentina. The particularities of the law-making process (expressed by an alliance between peasant organizations and the national government), was carried out by the open conflict that confronted the associations that group the producers of commercial agriculture with the national government in 2008 ).
Among the events related to the present CTP can be highlighted the conflict developed in March 2008 after the implementation of resolution 125/2008, promoted by the Ministry of Economy, which established the new regime of mobile retentions (special taxes) for the export of grains.
In 2008, the international prices of some grains (especially soybeans) had increased exponentially and to adjust the tax system to that variation the government decided to implement the new regime. This measure was resisted by the entities that group the producers of this type of crops associated with international trade, and generated a conflict that lasted 129 days. The agricultural entities began several weeks of lockout with cuts of routes and causing the food shortage of the main cities.
From this conflict, there was a rapprochement between peasant organizations and the national government. In September 2010, the MNCI held its first National Congress in which the objectives of improving dialogue between grassroots organizations and the government were to be established, as well as to influence rural development policies and the participation of peasant organizations.
In August 2012, Emilio Pérsico assumes the national under-secretary of family farming and convenes Ramiro Fresneda (MNCI member) in charge of the National Directorate of support to family farming organizations. In parallel, the United Nations declared 2014 as an International Year of Family farming recommending that member countries promote active policies for the sustainable development of agrarian systems based on the peasant, communal, indigenous and cooperative family units.
In this context, in July 2014, the national government elevate the Family farming area to the status of state Secretary. As part of this institutional consolidation, Ramiro Fresneda, a MNCI referent, was promoted in August to the post of undersecretary for Institutional Strengthening.
The family farming law is positively valued by MNCI referents as a major step forward in the recognition of their rights. They also recognize that they were able to participate actively in the process of drafting the law. However, they remain alert for some limitations that the law presents:
"On the one hand, it should be clarified that the law is a law of adhesion. This means, as one of its articles raises, that 'the provinces are invited to adhere to it and/or to harmonize its legislation as the case may be'. This fact is not less, since the provinces are usually more resistant to adopt measures that affect hegemonic interests, as has been clear with laws like the one of Forests and the one of Glaciers.
Likewise, the attempt to advance towards the establishment of the social function of the land finds its counterpart in the parliamentary debate on the reforms of the Civil Code of 2013, where legislator of the ruling party and the conservative opposition blocked the inclusion of this point to last moment. From the ruling party they argued that this definition did not correspond to Congress but to a constitutional reform (remember that the social function of property was guaranteed in the Constitution of 1949 and then eliminated by the dictatorship of 1955). On the contrary, some specialists - including the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, in its spanish initials) - argue that, in view of Argentina's adherence to the American Convention on Human Rights (through the 1994 constitutional reform), it would not be Necessary modification and could have included the subject in the new Civil Code."
Finally, the most serious problem denounced by peasant organizations is that the law was approved without the budgetary allocation it had planned. The referents of the peasant movement, pointed out that at the time of the parliamentary debate they evaluated that it was convenient that the law be approved as a first step and start the claim for regulation and budget in a second stage.
The Family farming law passed in 2014 was the result of a long and clearly planned process by peasant organizations. Since its creation, the MNCI's main objective was to influence the design of public policies at the national level to favor peasants and indigenous people.
With the political crisis brought about by the lockout of big agricultural associations in 2008, a window of opportunity was opened to consolidate a strategic alliance with the national government to achieve recognition and benefits. Thus, they were able to incorporate referents from the organization into spaces of public administration and to promote the family farming law. The law enacted in 2014 had a precedent in the proposal of a law to stop the evictions that the MNCI had impelled in 2011. In this way, it is possible observe that this CTP had been anticipated.
The main learning that can be highlighted in this CTP is how the MNCI, and the organizations that compose it, were able to assimilate the failed experience of the law to stop the evictions of 2011. At that time, the organizations began negotiations with different legislators and officials to Push the law without positive results.
The members of MNCI involved in the drafting of the family farming law emphasize that the learning was mutual (of the organizations and of the state):
"I think it has been a very interesting transit to pass from the legitimate claim in the assembly, in the streets and that of course must continue because it has a very important value; To advance in the field of proposition. And at the same time, the state learned to constructe laws with the organizations were actively involved in drafting the law, which does nothing more than put on paper the historical demands of the sector as legal security for land, rural roots, commercialization And innumerable devices that creates the law. That is, the more one opens the doors of the offices, the state finds serious popular organizations that really want to move forward and build a new rurality and an agricultural model that is not only economically sustainable but also social and environmental."
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