Dependent Articulation in the Global Pesticide Complex: Argentina's Agrochemical Industry After the Generics Market Revolution

ABSTRACT Since the late 1990s, the pesticide industry has undergone a ‘generics revolution’ as the centre of production, and trade has shifted to the global South. China and India have become major producers, capturing Latin American markets from Northern multinationals. As a major pesticide user and a key node in global supply chains, Argentina offers an exemplary case to understand these dynamics. The country's long‐established pesticide sector has undergone significant restructuring in relation to legacy R&D and emergent generics multinationals. This paper introduces the concept of ‘dependent articulation’, in dialogue with Latin American political economy, to deepen our understanding of these changes, offering a window into the workings of power and uneven development in the Global Pesticide Complex. We find that Argentinean agrochemical firms—with state support—navigate a more complex terrain of constrained agency between the quickly consolidating generics sector and the rapidly transforming R&D one. Through detailed analysis of firm trajectories, regulatory frameworks and market positioning, we identify four modes of dependent articulation that provide local companies room for manoeuvre in emerging uneven geographies of supply chain restructuring. In so doing, we offer insights into actually existing relations of uneven development shaping the contemporary agri‐food system beyond binary assumptions of neomercantilist and neoliberal regulation.