A relational approach to the health of domestic agricultural producers during the pandemic

Abstract

In a context traversed by the Covid-19 pandemic in Argentina, the article addresses the characteristics of health-disease-care (PSEA) processes in rural / agrarian settings, from a relational approach, which recovers the central role of the subject as a social actor capable of producing and not only reproducing the social structure and meanings, for which the identification of actors and the relationships established between them is central. This article proposes to understand the set of knowledge and practices that the subjects themselves develop in their health searches. Specifically, we share the results obtained in a case study carried out between the years 2013-2016 and during the months of August-September 2020, in the central-eastern region of the province of Catamarca, with domestic-based agricultural producers who participate in the National Forum of Family Farming (FONAF). Our search is aimed at understanding how access to health care was affected in this area and what domestic health care strategies were deployed during the pandemic. As an initial hypothesis, we propose that the inequities identified before the pandemic have deepened and that the decisions taken by the provincial government to contain it had a local impact, limiting the conditions of accessibility to health systems. In this situation, the domestic units linked to small agricultural production have suffered a radicalization of the obstacles to access / accessibility to the health care system, an overload in care tasks and a deepening of inequalities, among them, especially geographical ones.