Agriculture in Latin America on wane

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 12

Agriculture in Latin America on wane

From

GEOFFREY MATTHEWS,

in Bogota

When the Spanish Conquistadores, gripped by the gold fever of the El Dorado legend, first arrived in the vast region now called Latin America, they were blind to the real goldmine all around them: a rich and fertile soil where seemingly everything could grow. They did, of course, eventually recognise the region’s enormous agricultural wealth, but, whatever else they brought to the new world they had nothing to , teach — and a great deal to learn from — the indigenous peoples they had conquered about harvesting that wealth. The Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs were far superior farmers. Indeed, they had for their time among the most sophisticated and efficient agricultural systems anywhere in the world. Latin America is still as rich in agricultural terms as it was then. So why, even in such , countries of truly fantastic agricultural wealth like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, are large parts of the population suffering from malnutrition, some even literally , starving? That tragic situation, according to a United Nations report just published, is nowhere near solution. The region’s hungry masses are likely to get hungrier and more numerous in the next 20 years. The reason is not the region’s high birthrate, which, in fact, has sharply declined over

the last decade. It is that agriculture has been grossly mismanaged ever since the Spanish conquest. The Spanish swept away the efficient communal farming systems of the Indian civilisations and introduced fuedal systems which first exploited Indian labour, and later enriched a landowning class of pure Spanish blood. Today vast areas of the richest agricultural land in Colombia are devoted to the cultivation of marijuana. In Bolivia and Peru the plant from which cocaine is processed is being grown on a large scale. To make matters worse, peasants, tired of being exploited by the landowning class, are abandoning the land for cities in ever growing numbers. The report by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation makes gloomy reading, underlining again that the future of agriculture — once regarded as a panacea for all the region’s ills — is not bright. It says that agriculture will make up only 5 per cent of the region’s gross domestic product by the end .of the century. As recently as 1975, it accounted for 12 per cent. Production was inefficient. Progress and income were concentrated only in the most modern sectors of agriculture — and severe social problems affected the rural population.

The problem of the concentration of land in the hands of a few continued, as did the resulting problem of subsistence farming of tiny plots of land and radical division of agriculture into traditional and modern sectors. Of the region’s bigger countries, only Bolivia still had a majority of its citizens living in the countryside. Projections for agricultural imports indicate they would increase by 6.3 per cent annually over the next two decades, a far higher rate than that of the last 15 years. If these imports could not be paid for, prices would rise, the over-all economy would suffer, and the quality of diet would further deteriorate. Increasingly in recent, decades, the Latin America Left, particularly in those countries where large numbers of the populations are pureblooded Indians, has called for agrarian reform. It has been attempted in some countries, but only in a half-hearted way, and has been resisted by the landowning class. Argentina is one of the richest agricultural nations, not only in Latin America but the world. Argentina’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, says that on a recent visit to the provincial city of 'Sante Fe, “I saw children of four or five years fighting with pigs for something to eat in the municipal dump.” — Copyright London Observer Service.