The financial resources available for agricultural production are channeled to economic and political power groups, and not to small-scale producers, which are generally family or traditional and indigenous farmers. The allocation of resources to agriculture tends to diminish during this period throughout the region, and especially in the poorest countries, as a result of poor governance.
     Medium-sized production systems, which are dependent on government support, are efficient, but unable to meet market demand. Consequently, they frequently lose market shares to multinational production chains, which
export their products to the region. The performance of these medium-sized systems deteriorates, as they need to reduce their production costs more and more to keep their market share.

3.4.2.2.4 Results of interaction among the systems
Because of a lack of proactive measures to mitigate the effects of climate change, extensive tracts of land are increasingly vulnerable to those effects, making investments more risky. Agribusiness stakeholders wage an aggressive competition to gain access to natural resources. Investments in agriculture are dominated by transnational companies, which in many cases receive support from governments. The result is a volatile land and water market and the consolidation of natural resources in a few hands. All of this leads to an increase in income inequality.
     Public resources for education decrease, which increases the number of people without access to information and to collective organizations to defend their interests. This creates conditions that exacerbate income inequality and deepen social inequality. The income gap expands in some countries and remains stable in others, with an eventual improvement resulting from the delivery of resources, in the form of land titles for small farmers, for instance. In this way, an attempt is made to attenuate the heavy migration from rural areas to cities and other countries, which grew in the course of the previous period.
     As a rule, for a growing number of persons, access to health, employment, education and food security becomes more difficult. A segment of persons employed by the major corporations is created, as compared with persons who work for national organizations, the government, or independently. The middle class loses its status, since it becomes more impoverished. The situation of social disaggregation, violence, and insecurity worsens considerably.
     Although the bromatological quality of foods accessible to the urban poor is maintained by the standards of the previous period, the quantity of food for the poor in large urban centers decreases, mainly for the following reasons:
(1) the number of urban poor is on the rise, as a result of the lack of opportunities and jobs; and (2) there is a strong internal migration from rural areas to cities. The wealthiest countries, even in LAC, institute drastic measures to contain this migratory movement.
     The resilience22 of ecosystems diminishes considerably,
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22 Resilience is the capacity of a socio-environmental system
to absorb disruptions, deal with changes, and still essentially
maintain the same function and structure. Resilience depends

especially in poor countries. In these countries, natural resources are exploited virtually without restrictions. There is no capacity to adopt measures to recover degraded land or to mitigate and adapt to climate change, which is not a priority for the governments.

3.4.3 Life as it is

3.4.3.1 2007-2015

3.4.3.1.1 Context of the AKST systems and agricultural production
Trade barriers are used by developed countries as a mechanism to defend the competitiveness of their agricultural products. Minor victories in reducing barriers by agricultural commodity-producing countries are offset by new social or environmental barriers.
     The LAC countries already established on commodity markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, etc.) try to gain access to more dynamic markets (United States, China, India) and the market for differentiated products. However, these countries still cannot compete on markets for differentiated agricultural products, because of their increasingly limited capacity to invest in technological innovation for agricultural production systems. These countries continue to export commodities and diversify the portfolio of products by including biofuels, such as alcohol and biodiesel.
     Consumers in the richer countries both within and outside the region demand more and more quality, safety, functional properties, and environmentally friendly production methods for food and nonfood products, but they are not yet prepared to pay the cost associated with these demands. There are market openings for some differentiated products, such as products of the Amazon jungles, or the Chaco Paraguayo, or the salt desert of Bolivia, or from Patagonia. The internal LAC markets primarily consist of consumers with few resources, who demand low-priced foods and of niches for high-income consumers, with their demand for differentiated products.
     In most of the region, there is an increase in either the frequency or the severity of agricultural diseases and pests, as a result of the lack of incentives to use good management practices in production systems and the lack of a national governmental structure with the capacity to implement regional cooperation to prevent and mitigate the impacts of new epidemics and losses in biodiversity.
     In some parts of the region, there are huge changes in the pattern of land use, such as large tracts of monocultures of oleaginous crops and sugar cane for production of biofuels that lend themselves to the manifestation of new epidemics.
     The temperature is rising at the rate of 0.22°C-0.24°C per decade, and the frequency of extreme phenomena is growing. There are relevant but highly variable effects on agriculture and the systems in the region, especially as a result of the frequency with which these phenomena affect
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on the variability and flexibility of the system (Carpenter et al., 2005).