Traditional foodways nourish millions in Bolivia. Big agro doesn’t.

Lunch in Cochabamba. Drawing by Lorena K for Ojalá.

Opinion • Huáscar Salazar Lohman • June 28th, 2023  • Leer en castellano

The Bolivian diet is characterized by diversity. This is due in large part to the vast array of fresh foods grown in-country that are part of deep-rooted culinary traditions.

From numerous kinds of Andean potatoes with their different shapes and flavors, to maizes produced in many parts of Bolivia, to an exquisite variety of vegetables and fruits: these are the foods that nourish millions of people on a daily basis. That is why it's important to discuss what we mean when we talk about food in the country.

According to research by Carola Tito Velarde and Fernanda Wanderley, about 98 percent of the fresh food that makes up the household food basket in Bolivia and that's not imported comes from small-scale, family agriculture. Just under two percent of this comes from the larger scale economy, that is, from agribusiness.

It is small-scale family agriculture, considered by many as a "backward", "inefficient" or "unproductive" sector, that makes human life possible in Bolivia. 

For this to happen, women and men farm the countryside through productive models based on concrete work aimed at producing food with the purpose of feeding themselves and the rest of the population.

In contrast, Bolivian agribusiness produces a great mass of goods—labeled "food" without being food—through ruthless extractivism, the depredation of vast territories and the imposition of an economic model that encourages violence.

These products are traded on abstract international financial markets and end up benefiting large capital, whose purpose is to improve profitability. If they do end up feeding people, it's merely circumstantial.

Monocrops aren't food—especially not in Bolivia

In October and November 2022, the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz and the Bolivian government engaged in a fight over the date of the next Population and Housing Census. The Santa Cruz elites declared a violent "civic strike" that lasted over a month. During the conflict, the leadership of the Civic Committee flaunted their power by repeatedly arguing that the department of Santa Cruz was responsible for feeding Bolivia. This idea only fueled the existing climate of political polarization.

The Bolivian agribusiness propaganda machine has been fine-tuning this discourse for a long time now. Their claim is that the production model in Santa Cruz, which is sustained mainly by agribusiness, supplies around 75 percent of the food produced in Bolivia.

This figure, presented by many as an absolute truth, raises the need for a much deeper analysis of how food is produced. It also raises the question of how we conceptualize what we understand as food, and the function that these products have in a world constrained by capitalist logic.

The first step in this analysis is to understand the difference between what's understood as the quantity of food produced in a country, the quantity and origin of the food consumed by the population of a country. These are two different things.

Santa Cruz may produce 75 percent of the country's food, if said percentage includes products labeled as "food" that for the most part don't feed the Bolivian population (many don't feed anyone outside the country either).

Let's look at the most high profile case: soybeans. 

According to data from the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE), Bolivia produced 3.5 million metric tons of this oilseed during 2022. However, that same year 2.9 million tons of soybeans and their derivatives were exported. In other words, more than 80 percent of the soybean produced in the country ends up in international markets, where it is traded as a commodity.

The same happens with most mono-crops in eastern Bolivia. They are exported, while a smaller share stays in the country enmeshed in capital-intensive production chains and tied, as raw materials, to the production of ultra-processed food. Or, as the government and agribusiness have been highlighting more recently, as an input for the production of "renewable energy."

A small part of the 75 percent of what agribusiness calls food actually ends up feeding the Bolivian population. If it does, it’s in an unhealthy way.

Santa Cruz does produce food for the population, but it's not through agribusiness, which is what local political elites keep claiming. Santa Cruz also produces food through peasant Indigenous agriculture, which is the least visible and the most disdained by public policy.

Capital vs. life

Beyond the limited frame of analysis built around distinguishing between left- or right-wing governments, the Bolivian economy is organized to prioritize extractive activities like mining, hydrocarbons and agribusiness.

These activities generate almost immediate economic profits and cause harmful environmental impacts. Their production model is directly related to transnational capitalist interests, and some of them—especially hydrocarbon extraction and, to a lesser extent, mining—tend to generate significant income for the state, which has a magnetizing effect on those in power.

Agribusiness in particular has been majorly incentivized over the last two decades. The diesel they use is subsidized; without this, they would not be competitive in international commodities markets. Easy credit—loaned from public sector pension funds—has been granted so firms can refinance old debts. The government has modified regulations to benefit the sector, which among other things has enabled the legalization of massive deforestation. Bolivia is now among the top 10 countries with the highest levels of deforestation in the world.

Traveling alongside the fields where agribusiness crops spread, the landscape is accompanied by large highways that align with the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America strategy, and by vehicles with cutting-edge technology for planting, managing and harvesting genetically modified monocrops.

A massive deployment of capital is required for the production of commodities that masquerade as "food." In general, it is clear that Bolivian agribusiness has been pampered by public policy.

In contrast, areas that do produce food for local consumption lack adequate roads, many of which aren't accessible year round and generally have poor infrastructure. 

The possibility of growing food in Bolivia is conditioned by the deployment of a great deal of human and animal energy in very precarious conditions, which is evident in the deteriorated bodies of those who work the land. 

In Cochabamba, which is an inter-Andean valley with among the largest extensions of farmable land through irrigation, only 22 percent of the cultivated area has sufficient water for production. In this region, the average size of family farms is 1.5 hectares. Most small farmers cannot access any type of financing to improve their production conditions.

All of this makes food production difficult. Many of those involved in agriculture are unable to survive and have to migrate to other regions of the country in order to improve their quality of life.

All together, this is causing national agricultural production to stagnate, which is reflected in the massive increase in imports and smuggling of fresh food to Bolivia, which hits this sector even harder. 

More than 30 percent of the fresh foods consumed by the Bolivian population—many of which are native to Bolivia—now come from other countries, as is the case of potatoes. By 2007, 16,000 tons of this tuber were imported annually. By 2016, imports exceeded 51 thousand tons, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics.

Bolivia’s productive model pays minimal attention to guaranteeing food for the population and instead focuses on the production of goods promoted as "food" whose purpose is to generate economic profits in the short term. In fact, agribusiness ends up being subsidized by the work of the people who produce food for local consumption.

Bolivian agribusiness is yet another example of an economic model that organizes human and non-human life around private interests, instead of putting life at the center.