Tensions at the Top: Agro-Industrial Elites and Landowners in the Colombian Cauca Valley Region

In this paper, I examine the conflicts, tensions, and power imbalances between two social agents in Colombia’s sugarcane agroindustry. On one side are the owners and shareholders of sugarcane mills, organised under Asocaña, a business association established in 1959 to advance the interests of an emergent agro-industrial bourgeoise. On the other side are the large landowners who supply the raw cane essential for the mills’ operation, and who in response to the mills’ economic and political dominance, founded their own business association, Procaña, in 1973. These two groups belong to the region's upper social class(es). I argue that the evolving relationships between these two social agents reflect changes in land availability in the fertile Cauca Valley in western Colombia. When land was abundant and there was ample room for expanding sugarcane cultivation, the mills’ owners and shareholders were able to impose contractual conditions that landowners perceived as ‘unequal’. However, as land availability in the valley has decreased over the past decades and the agrarian frontier has closed, landowners have gained greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the mill’s owners. This shift has fostered mutual dependence between the agents. While the mills’ owners and shareholders have consolidated their status as a powerful regional agro-industrial elite, their reliance on landowners’ supplies limits their dominance. Conversely, landowners can now negotiate better prices for their product, but their economic success remains closely tied to that of the mills, which constrains their freedom and economic independence. Using archives, interviews, and desk-research, I trace these shifts and power imbalances within historical conjectures shaped by international processes and national policies. First, during the period following the Cuban revolution, when the mills expanded production to meet the U.S. demand for sugar. Second, in the aftermath of the economic liberalisation of the late 1980s, which devastated much of Colombian agriculture but further consolidated sugarcane production in the Cauca Valley. Finally, in the 2000’s, the emergence of biofuels opened a new market for the sugarcane agroindustry. In this latter phase, while the mills’ business association successfully lobbied Congress to pass regulations securing their market, land scarcity imposed material limits on their expansion, ultimately strengthening the bargaining position of landowners. Examining class dynamics at the upper echelons of society reveals a rich and complex ecosystem. It highlights the differences between agents who are often conflated and assumed to share equal interests. It also reveals the channels communicating them, with institutions like family taking centre stage and playing a crucial role in the reproduction of inequality and privilege. Additionally, it challenges the conventional divide between rural and urban spaces, questioning assumptions about who belongs to which and how these distinctions operate. More substantially, it underscores the significance of class dynamics at the top in shedding light on the agrarian question and land politics in the 21st century.