A comparative study of the impact of Argentine and Mexican agricultural modernization on land use and soil erosion

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the agricultural modernization process on changes in land use and soil erosion in Mexico and Argentina. The process of agricultural modernization emerged as a result of changes in the international food system through which a feed grain livestock complex changed patterns of production, consumption and meat trade. This has caused an increase in livestock production in the South of Mexico and its decrease in the central region of Argentina, called the Pampeana Region. For this reason, the pattern of land use changed in the first case from forest land to pasturage land, through deforestation and, in the Argentine case, from land devoted to agriculture in rotation with pasturage to restore fertility, to land devoted only to intensive agriculture. In both cases, it results in high rates of soil erosion.