Buy Milk not Meat. Study on the Change in Ideas and Practices of the Leaders of the Agricultural and Livestock Society of Osorno During its First Thirty Years of Existence

Abstract

The producers from the Valdivia and Osorno Provinces associated the 1929 crisis with the weakening of the national political system, which led them to generate alliances with the government to protect both local production and the predominant economic and social structure. The State, conversely, asked the producers to turn to dairy production to supply the demand required by new social policies. This productive turn allowed the consolidation of a new type of local producer that relying on agreements with the State rose to positions of leadership within the local groups and imposed its produce as the main productive vocation of the provinces. This study seeks to study the alliances between food producers and the State as a mechanism to stabilize food supply, which contributed to the democratic consolidation of the mid-century.