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The purpose of this paper is to study the activities of rural extension conducted between 1973 and 1983 by one of the main Argentinean state agencies: the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA). Regarding this period, which starts and ends with a democratic transition, an analysis has been made on the content and perspective of the organization's rural extension agenda in relation to the transformations seen in matters of sectoral policies, socioeconomic changes in the rural area, and in the implementation of repressive mechanisms. There has been an evaluation on the operation of INTA's state bureaucracy throughout its processes of institutional reconfiguration: one in 1973 alongside that year's democratic transition and the other in 1976 in hand with Argentina's last dictatorship. In light of documentary sources and interviews, a review has been drafted on institutional directives, nationwide coordination of agricultural policies, and the experiences of the INTA extension workers, primarily located in the Buenos Aires province. Additionally, we have identified the existence of various practices during the previous years of the last dictatorship involving direct contact with rural populations different from those of a more traditional approach, and its limitations have also been highlighted. Finally, we have analyzed the reorientation of the institution rural extension tasks as it underwent a military intervention between 1976 and 1983. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analyzing and comparing two textbooks designed for the third year of High School as regards the way in which they approach the agricultural border advance in Argentina. Both textbooks express the points of view of academic writers, mainly from the field of Geography but also from other Social Sciences as well. Our purpose is to analyze whether the relationship between the type of knowledge proposed by the curriculum of the province of La Pampa and the proposals introduced by the textbooks through the authors’ perspectives is made evident. Departing from this premise, then, we can introduce the following question: Will it be possible to teach and learn this topic from different perspectives and approaches based on the tenets of Social and Critical Geography, taking into account what the National Law of Education (LEN) prescribes? In reference to the proposed aim it will be of crucial importance to promote a comprehensive approach which might lead to a better understanding of the territorial logic of the social subjects. This will in turn lead to understand the different points of view and the multiple dimensions: economic-productive, political, socio-demographic, cultural and environmental which play different roles in the process of soybean production in Argentina’s rural areas, known in Spanish as “sojización.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oregano is cultivated in semiarid regions with a negative water balance, therefore is necessary to apply irrigation according water needs. The area of 25 de mayo, La Pampa, which is fed by the Río Colorado, has an irrigation system that makes it suitable for this kind of farming. The goal of this paper was characterize productivity of four oregano ecotypes (Criollo, Mendocino, Cordobés and Compacto) in the irrigated area of 25 de Mayo. Dry matterin flowers and leaves of each ecotype was determined. The results showed that there were no significant differences in yield (p=0.05). However, it should be highlighted that important differences could be observed in the field where, Criollo and Cordobés ecotypes had highest productivity. The yield obtained was highest than in traditional areas, such as Mendoza and Córdoba, which makes the region under study a promising option for oregano production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human resource training and knowledge generation adapted to the operating conditions of the various regional productions in Argentina, occupied the attention of experts from the Department of Agriculture, agrarian entities, political and educational sectors, since the early twentieth century. It did not escape this interest a concern about women and farm home. The aim of this paper is to analyze, in this context, the first decades of the "Ramón Santamarina" Farm School of Tandil, an establishment with a rich institutional history that housed the first school of farm home, soon transformed into a farm school and specialized in dairy industry. The transit to the farm household to the preparation of cheese masters, under productivist orientation of schools in the educational proposal of the Department of Agriculture, the social subjects involved, specialization in dairy and its results, are some of the issues discussed, as part of an educational agrarian project not only as a source of labor associated with specific agricultural industries, but also --and perhaps more than anything-- as irradiators of that kind of teaching towards the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]