Global Value Chains and Disappearing Rural Livelihoods: The Degeneration of Land Reform in a Chilean Village, 1995-2005

ABSTRACT

This article assesses land ownership patterns among small-scale producers of non-traditional fruit exports (NTAX) in El Palqui, Chile, in the context of the country’s extensive neoliberal reforms during dictatorial rule from 1973- 1989 and their continuation under successive democratic Concertación governments since 1990. It reports on work that revisits an export boom locality ten years after an initial study in 1995 and traces the impacts on local farmers of neoliberal restructuring and insertion into global chains. It concludes that small farmers have continued to lose their land to companies and larger farmers, effectively reversing the land reform which took place in the locality in the 1970s. Ultimately without protection small farmers will find it increasingly difficult to sustain their livelihoods. This threatens to undermine the stated goal of growth with equity in the Chilean countryside.