A complex world

During the nineties, the expansion of trade and the growing flow of people were considered irreversible trends. Chile received every incentive to place its production in international markets, within a progressively balanced macroeconomic context: sustained increases in foreign and domestic investment, in technology transfer, in infrastructure. Agro-forestry production took off — according to the World Bank, and despite the pandemic, the value of domestic production multiplied by 7.6 over the last three decades.

More important still: over the same period, the share of the population in multidimensional poverty fell from 55.1% to 30.9%, and monetary poverty fell from 32.9% to 8.6% (Klasen & Villalobos, 2020, World Development). Trade did not merely enrich Chile; it re-drew the country’s social map.

Is this growth path sustainable over time? Probably not. September 11, 2001 marked the start of a process defined by the discouragement of multilateralism and the rise of nationalism. To make matters worse, large refugee flows, the interruption of major trade routes, the trade war between China and the United States, and the pandemic have shown that borders are more alive than ever.

Diversification will be the product of an intelligent process — not necessarily of an opportunity.

In this context, policies promoting food security have regained vigor in the first world. They no longer rest solely on reducing the risk of famine; they build on a shift in consumer preferences toward sustainability and the local. Fair trade, the promotion of local produce and “Bio” production are established market tendencies — and aggressive ones, because their advertising is grounded in the denunciation of foreign production: the carbon footprint, labor mistreatment, certain pesticides, transgenic crops, the depletion of resources critical to communities of origin, such as water.

We must understand that productivity by itself will not secure a sustainable activity in the long run. It is urgent that the agro-forestry sector and academia cooperate: to mitigate exchange-rate oscillations, to anticipate demand shocks, and to understand what domestic and international food-security policies imply for production and commercialization, in a context of changing consumer preferences and trade wars.

Trade diversification, in short, will be the product of an intelligent process — and not necessarily of an opportunity.