The New Soya Frontier: Labour Process of the Self-Made Man in Global Value Chains

The reconfiguration of global production and the impacts where this process take place has been focus of different studies. Value chain analysis looks at the different elements (governance and upgrading etc.) that shape the process of production, transformation and distribution of a good or service in different parts of the globe. Recently, attempts have been made in order to integrate what occurs inside the chains and its evolution (vertical elements) with the impacts of these chains/networks in the world where people live and make their lives (horizontal elements). This paper is an additional contribution to understand the different outcomes of value chains in the horizontal realm by analyzing the soy chain in Amapá, the new frontier for expansion of this grain in Brazil. I will contribute to the debate by bringing up three contributions: a different actor –medium-size producers-, ideas from Labour Process (LP) Theory to understand their positionality, and an uncertain place (workplace) where producers and soy chain are embedded. Within this framework this paper focuses on how seeking new agricultural frontiers transformed medium size producers positionality in value chains. This paper is an invitation to first: think about production processes beyond economics and consider politics and ideology elements. Second, break assumptions by opening the black box of a commonly demonized and rarely studied actor –medium size producers- who is trying to upgrade their position not only in the soy chain, but also in their lives. Finally acknowledge the presence of tensions/ambiguities in the process of production, which put pressures to the process of upgrading of producers and create tensions affecting peoples’ lives in the place where this chain is embedded.