innovations into the process of extractive exploitation, and very often the result is the degradation of the environment, or a reduction in ecological capacities for resilience.
Territories are also social, cultural, political, and institutional constructions. They are spaces connected to regional or local societies, with traditions and cultures that shape relationships with nature. Andean peoples, for example, cultivated a relationship with nature that centered on coexistence at various ecological levels. This is a good example of a fertile interaction between cultures and ecological territories (Murra, 2017 [1969]). Juan Wahren argues that we can “define a territory as a geographic space shot through with social, political, cultural, and economic relations, a space that is constantly resignified by the actors who live in and act on it, creating a territorial stage for conflicts through the appropriation and reterritorialization of space and of the natural resources that are found there” (Wahren, 2011: 12–13).
Various territorial actors tend to act not only on the territories that they inhabit, but also in networks. In such networks, they find support, solidarity, and even financing. Moreover, the effects of environmental degradation that can be directly experienced in a given territory can have global impacts, given their implications for climate change, which affects us all. The United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2007–2008 (UNDP, 2007) – like other reports, including the 2006 report on water by the same agency (UNDP, 2006) – noted that the countries that pollute most are those with the highest levels of human development, and those that suffer most from pollution are those that have the lowest levels of human development. Still, the consequences of pollution vary and are felt at a global scale. Every local territory is therefore “glocal,” informational, and a new field for conflicts shaped by concrete experiences.
Let us consider some examples of the workings of informational extraction and its implications for territories.
Three Cases: Lithium in Jujuy, Soy in Carlos Casares in the Humid Pampa in Buenos Aires Province, and Unconventional Hydrocarbons in the Vaca Muerta
In Argentina, as in other countries,1 we can find the coexistence of different types or models of corporate development and informational extraction. At least three such models coexist in this context.
In the province of Jujuy, in the new extractive market for lithium, productive, organizational, and informational processes are mainly linked to transnational corporations. This creates a dual dynamic. On the one hand, there are the simple extractive processes, which, especially during the early stages, rely on local manual labor. On the other hand, there are processes of complex reworking and mineral processing that turn raw materials into a series of technological and informational products, relying in large part on labor from abroad. According to information offered by the company Sales de Jujuy, in 2017 it created 270 jobs, of which around 120 were for workers who resided in local communities (Pragier and Deluca, forthcoming: 37).
Sales de Jujuy S. A. is a partnership that brings together the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota Tsusho, an Australian mining company called Orocobre Limited, and a company known as Jujuy Energía y Minería, Sociedad del Estado, based in the province of Jujuy. Financing is mainly provided by the Mizuho Bank of Japan, which also underwrites the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation. Of course, agreements between extractive corporations and the multinational corporations that require their products presuppose that the latter guarantee purchases in a given price range.
In the case of YPF, S. A., based in the Vaca Muerta formation in the province of Neuquén, we see a combination of industrial, oil-based extractivism and complex processing by technological and informational means, in networks that include systems for the importation and processing of gravel in China, wells for the extraction of gas and oil, digitally monitored through nodes installed by the corporation itself. In this context, new horizontal fracking technologies are also noteworthy, as are various commercial and financial systems, organized and managed through networks. This corporation is part of a global network of networks.
In the case of the soy produced by the company Los Grobo Agropecuaria, one of Gustavo Grobocopatel’s companies, the systems of organization and management are totally computerized. They include broad networks of workers, divided into specializations according to the activities they perform; they range from young people processing algorithms to experts in finance at the global scale. From its headquarters in Carlos Casares, a range of activities are organized and completed, from the extraction of soy to the global promotion, marketing, and financial management of the company. It is worth pausing briefly to consider this company’s workings.
The main business unit, based in Carlos Casares in the Province of Buenos Aires, is an informational corporation that is highly innovative and that is organized by a techno-informational division of labor, according to which various centers work on specific areas relevant to the different stages of production and circulation. These centers are interconnected as well as connected to other glocal networks. It is of particular interest that they are also associated with universities’ systems for agricultural research, and in particular with the Instituto Nacional de Technology Agropecuaria and the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
The company’s operational centers include sites for studying specific dynamics involved in technological production (at specific times of year) as well as for the processes of planting, harvesting, and storing crops in Carlos Casares. They also include sites for complex financial and commercial transactions, for the administration of trade, and for the development of production strategies. There are also sites for the study of business, sales, and projections for the price of soy on the various international stock exchanges. These, too, are, from the first, integrated into and connected with other sites in the country and the region where scientific and technological research takes place.
In cultural terms, this has generated a culture of informational work that valorizes innovation and the scientific and technological capabilities of workers. These qualities are seen to be pivotal for agricultural and land development, and this has influenced all other producers in the Humid Pampas as well as others in other regions and other countries in South America and the Caribbean.
In political terms, despite the partisan politics of the municipality and the region, the company’s activities and its efforts at social integration and cultural participation (for example, in public schools) are highly valued by local citizens. Opposition to the company comes mainly from outside Carlos Casares.
In a report by Leila Guerrero for the magazine Gatopardo, Gustavo Grobocopatel is quoted as saying:
Because of a flood, we learned to farm in fields other than our own, and I realized that it did not make sense to have land of your own. That you could grow enormously by planting crops in the ground with very little money and very quickly. After this, things got more sophisticated, but I think that this was the conceptual origin of our business model: the realization that you can farm without land, without capital, and without labor. Without land, because you rent; without labor, because you outsource it; and without capital, because they lend it to you. I don’t know if we are the inventors, but we are the people who have gone farthest with this idea.
Nevertheless, as Wahren adds, all of this takes place in a very complex territorial context. In the late 1940s, Argentina used only 10,000 liters per year of agrochemicals, a figure that increased to 3.5 million by the 1970s. But beginning in 1996 (the year when the use of genetically modified soy seeds was approved), more than 200 billion liters of glyphosate were added to the 69 billion traditional agrochemicals already in use. According to some sources, the former figure should in fact be closer to 300 billion. In other words, this is an unprecedented situation, involving 19 million hectares of genetically modified soy and around 370 billion liters of agrochemicals that have not been proven to be harmless, since the precautionary principle has not been observed.
In terms of
