Rise and fall of Pampas as a food basket for Europe

Introduction

By way of geographical definition, Pampas comprise five provinces of Argentina— Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Cardoba, Santa Fe and Entre Rios. Endowed with rich agriculture resources, pampas account for 90 per cent of the improved land in Argentina. The area boasts of high quality cattle; excellent soil and proximity to national markets and export outlets. Significantly, pampas have had no use of fertilisers for the cultivation of traditional crops as the soil contained the necessary nutrients to retain the fertility.

Rise and fall of Pampas as a food basket for Europe

What led to the economic success of pampas in Argentina? By the middle of the 19th Century, potentiality of the pampas to be the ‘food basket’ for Western Europe began to emerge. Argentine centralised political system provided a congenial environment within which this potential could be realised. Between 1850s and 1880s, pampas land witnessed complete transformation and it had decisive impact on the Argentine economy.

Factors responsible for this transformation included political stability after the overthrow of dictator Rosas in 1852; access to expanding markets of Western Europe; the elimination of the nomadic Indian hunters to the South-West; the introduction of agricultural and pastoral techniques such as windmills, machinery and barbed wire fences; influx of capital from British investors; the immigration of Italian labour; the spread of railway network in the region and speedy trans-oceanic transport with refrigerated facilities to bridge the time gap between producers and consumers.

Rise and fall of Pampas as a food basket for Europe

The breadbasket of a country or of a region is an area which, because of the richness of the soil and/or advantageous climate, produces large quantities of wheat or other grain. Rice bowl is a similar term used to refer to Southeast Asia; and California's Salinas Valley is sometimes referred to as America’s salad bowl. Such regions may be the subject of fierce political disputes which may even escalate into full military conflicts. Breadbaskets have become important within the global food system: concentrating global food-production in a small number of countries, and (in countries such as India) in small geographic regions. As climate change increase weather variability around the world, the likelihood of multiple breadbaskets failing at one time increases dramatically.

Rise and fall of Pampas as a food basket for Europe

The 2022 food crises has been in part facilitated by a series of failures in key breadbasket regions, at the same time that the Russian invasion of Ukraine created significant potential disruption of the respective breadbasket regions important for global wheat and oil seed production.

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