Rural development forums in Uruguay: Participation and political change
International Journal of Development Research
Rural development forums in Uruguay: Participation and political change
Received 14th January, 2022; Received in revised form 19th January, 2022; Accepted 14th February, 2022; Published online 30th March, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Virginia Courdin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The article examines the participation of farmers in the Mesas de Desarrollo Rural (MDRs) established in Uruguay in 2007. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with various stakeholders between 2016 - 2018 to explore their participation, analyse official documents and do participant observation of meetings. The main findings indicate the adaptability of these mechanisms to territorial and producer conditions; their openness to other non-agricultural sectoral institutions; and difficulties in maintaining or renewing the participation dynamic, particularly of farmers’ representatives. The impacts of the political changes in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic on MDRs were also examined after new interview of new policy responsibles.
