Stages of agricultural research in Argentina. / Etapas de la investigación agropecuaria en la Argentina: Cambios en la cantidad de personal del INTA entre 1956 y 2010

The present work aims to analyze the changes in the INTA throughout its history, in relation to the number of staff affected to the institution. INTA (National Institute of Agricultural Technology) is the most important public research center on agricultural issues in Argentina. Created in 1956, INTA has deployed a huge presence throughout the country, developing basic and applied research (in various disciplines) and rural extension activities. This diversity of practices –from knowledge production to technology transfer– for the agricultural sector has gone through various political and economical contexts. Although it has maintained its overall profile, INTA has not been immune to these contextual changes.

This work aims to show one of the fundamental ways in which these changes impact on a research institution, that is, through its human resources. To this end, this paper focuses on a quantitative study, analyzing the changes in recruitments and retirements throughout the institution history. It accounts of these changes not only at the level of the institution as a whole, but also particularizing in some research institutes within the INTA. This analysis, moreover, is supplemented with a qualitative approach to account for certain general features which have marked these stages of Argentina's history and thus relate these macro changes and some measures taken by the INTA with changes in the number of staff at the institution. This way, this study makes evident much of the specific policies that have been implemented in agricultural research in Argentina in the last 55 years.