Based on the analysis of certain aspects of water policy in Sierras Chicas (Córdoba, Argentina), a region that is currently facing a water crisis, I explore the relation between population and natural resources as part of the more general dynamics of the social production of space and territory, specífically in terms of its linkage with forms of land appropiation and rents. Starting with a critique of postulates that explain the above-mentioned relationship in terms of scarcity (both absolute and relative), I approach the problem within the framework of an open-ended series of social relations and processes that are also constitutive of it, such as the perspectives of those who are protagonists in these phenomena or state intervention in said dynamics.