Capital has no homeland: The formation of transnational producer cohorts in South America’s commodity frontiers

Abstract

Most of today’s agricultural frontiers in the Global South involve large-scale agricultural companies operating across borders. While much has been written on large-scale land acquisitions and their social and ecological consequences, there is a relative lack of theoretically-informed empirical research on the decision-making of the actors driving these acquisitions. In this paper, I use the case of soy and cattle frontiers in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano woodlands of Paraguay and Bolivia to explore the mechanisms behind such transnational land acquisitions. In particular, I draw attention to the formation of “cohorts” of agricultural producers from a common origin who acquire land in the same destinations. Based on interviews with farmers and key informants and drawing from literature on agricultural frontiers, international migration, and herding behavior, I discuss the role of structural and agent-level factors in the formation and evolution of these cohorts from the early 1990s to the 2010s. In particular, I explore the importance of social dynamics, specifically network effects and herd effects, in shaping the development of these frontiers.