Bulmer-Thomas V., Coatsworth J., Cortes-Conde R. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: Volume 2, The Long Twentieth Century

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352 Otto T. Solbrig

An exception to this was the Andes, home to a large indigenous population

that was experiencing a demographic increase after the disastrous decline of

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Agricultural activities, mostly of an

extensive nature, had only a reduced environmental impact and although

mining enclaves such as salitre exploitation in northern Chile had important

impacts, they were conﬁned to a few sites. This was to change dramatically

in the second half of the century, a result of demographic and economic

growth. Intensiﬁcation of agriculture and a massive move of population

toward hitherto unoccupied areas, especially tropical forests and savanna

regions, took place.

The end of the Second World War ushered in a new economic order.

The United States became the hegemonic power and replaced Great Britain

as the main market and principal source of ﬁnancing for Latin America.

At the start of the 1950s, most countries in the area decided to pursue a

more isolationist policy of import substitution. Although successful in its

early stages, when many countries experienced fast economic growth, most

notably Mexico and Brazil, it soon ran out of steam. For the most part, the

highly protected industries turned out to be technically backward and non-

competitive. They also were – and still are – highly polluting. Eventually,

in order to obtain the necessary foreign exchange, most countries returned

to the early policy of exporting natural products, primarily agricultural and

mineral. Forest products became an important export as well as ﬁsh and

other marine resources. With it came a high degree of landscape transforma-

tion of a scope and intensity that had not been witnessed before and that has

alarmed national and foreign governments, environmentalists, and inter-

national institutions. Attention has been focused on the Amazon basin, but

landscape transformation and degradation has occurred throughout Latin

America in the last ﬁfty years and still continues unabated.

Some indicators of the environmental transformation and degradation

of Latin America’s environment are a higher rate of deforestation, greater

use of fossil fuels, increased water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Other

indicators are a very high rate of population growth, now in decline, and

increased social and economic inequality.

The growth of population and the moves toward the intensiﬁcation

of agriculture were paramount in the territorial expansion of agriculture

and livestock growing and the concomitant deforestation. During the sec-

ond half of the century Latin America experienced the highest population

growth in its history: a 216 percent increase between 1950 and 2000. This

varied considerably, ranging from some Caribbean islands with less than a

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Table 9.1.

Rural environment and land use

Rural population

Percent of land area

Percent of Total

Annual

growth

People per

sq. km

Land area

(million hectares) Arable land Permanent crops

Other

1980 1999 1980–99 1998

1998 1980 1998 1980 1998

1980 1998

Argentina

17 10

–1.215 2

,737 9.19

.10

.80

.890

.190

Bolivia

55 38 0.3

156

1,084 1.71

.80.20

.298

.198

Brazil

34 19

–1.362 8

,457 4.66

.31.21

.494

.292

Chile

19 15 0.2

111

749 5.12

.60.30

.494

.696

Colombia

36 27 0.4

529

1, 039 3.62

.01.42

.095

.096

Costa Rica

57 52 1.9824

51 5.54

.44.45

.590

.190

Cuba

32 25

–0.677

110 23.933

.16.47

.669

.759

Dominican Republic

50 36 0.3280

48 22.122

.17.29

.970

.668

Ecuador

53 36 0.3284

277 5.65

.73.35

.291

.189

El Salvador

58 54 1.1

582

21 26.927

.011.712

.161

.460

Guatemala

63 61 2.4482

108 11.712

.54.45

.083

.982

Haiti

76 65 1.1895

28 19.820

.312.512

.767

Honduras

65 48 1.4

179

112 13.915

.11.83

.184

.381

Mexico

34 26 0.598 1

,909 12.113

.20.81

.187

.185

Nicaragua

50 44 2.187

1219

.520

.21.52

.489

.177

Panama

50 44 1.3244

74 5.86

.71.62

.192

.591

Paraguay

58 45 1.5108 3

97 4

.15

.50.30

.295

.694

Peru

35 28 0.7

189

1,280 2.52

.90.30

.497

.296

Puerto Rico

33 25

–0.42

,990

9 8.33

.77.35

.184

.391

Uruguay

15 9

–2.024

175 8.07

.20.30

.391

.792

Venezuela

21 13 0.1120 8

82 3

.23

.00.91

.095

.996

Latin America

35 25 0.0

252 20,062 5.86

.71.11

.393

.192

Source:

World Bank (Washington, DC).

353

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354 Otto T. Solbrig

50 percent population growth rate to increases of more than 300 per-

cent in some mainland countries (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, and

Venezuela). Such a dramatic increase in a population that was 59 percent

rural in 1950 had a signiﬁcant effect on Latin American societies. One effect

was a massive movement of people to cities, with the consequence that by

the year 2000, the rural population was reduced to only 24.3 percent of the

total. That is, although in absolute numbers the total population doubled,

the rural population increased by only a third. Averages hide, however,

signiﬁcant and very important differences among countries in the size and

growth of the rural population.

Onegroup of countries, formed by a mixture of some Caribbean islands

(Puerto Rico, Cuba), the Southern Cone countries (Uruguay, Argentina,

Chile), and Brazil, actually saw an absolute decrease in their rural popula-

tion. At the other end of the spectrum, we ﬁnd all the Central American

countries, whose rural population more than doubled: Panama (126%),

Honduras (167%), El Salvador (171%), Nicaragua (201%), Guatemala

(228%), and Costa Rica (266%). Paraguay (148%) is the only South Ameri-

can country with a similar increase in the rural population. Not surprisingly,

these countries also have the highest rate of deforestation in Latin America.

The enormous growth of the population had a very negative environ-

mental impact. The combination of very high demographic growth and

rural–urban migration produced some of the largest cities in the world;

many of them, such as Mexico City and Santiago de Chile, are notorious

for their unhealthy air, unreliable water supply, and serious social problems.

It also led to the creation of very polluting industries such as the maquil-

ladoras along the Mexico–U.S. border, or the notorious industrial city of

Cubat

ao near the port city of Santos in Brazil, nicknamed the “valley of

death.”

Butitwas in the rural areas where the greatest landscape trans-

formations took place, with concomitant serious environmental problems.

SOME TYPES OF LAND USE SINCE 1950

In the last ﬁfty years, Latin America has experienced enormous land-use

changes. In the lowland tropics, land hitherto unused has been occu-

pied and transformed mostly into extensive cattle-ranching operations or

Butnow fortunately restored to health. “Cubat

ao: Brazil’s Ecological Success,” The Financial Times,

June 10, 1988.

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Economic Growth and Environmental Change 355

agriculture. In temperate regions, agriculture has intensiﬁed signiﬁcantly.

Newcrops, mainly oil-crops, fruits, and vegetables for export, are sup-

planting traditional food staples. Fossil fuel energy production and use is

up, as is the use of hydroelectric power, indicators of a much more inten-

sive use of land. These developments all indicate an accelerating environ-

mental transformation with both negative and positive implications, as we

will see.

transformation of tropical lowland forests

We lack reliable appraisals of the original extent of forests and woodlands

in Latin America. It is estimated

that forest originally occupied slightly

above half (55%) of the South American landmass and two thirds of Mexico,

Central America, and the Caribbean (67%). By 1997,itwas judged that

only 63 percent of the original forests were still extant in Mexico, 55 percent

in Central America and the Caribbean, and 69 percent in South America.

The ﬁrst serious forest inventory for the entire region was made in 1980

by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In 1990 and 2000,

other inventories allowed estimates of the rate of deforestation for the

1980–90 and 1990–2000 decades. It was found that although the largest

surface decrease in forested area in that period was in Brazil – not surprising

given that in 1980, almost six million square kilometers of the more than

ten million square kilometers of forest and woodland in Latin America

were there – the greatest rate of deforestation in Latin America has been

in Central America and the Caribbean. In South America, Paraguay and

Ecuador are the countries with the greatest rate of deforestation.

Brazil lost in the 1980–90 decade a little more than 6 percent of its

forests, which is probably an underestimate. This ﬁgure is dwarfed by

what happened in Haiti (38.7%), Costa Rica (25.8%), Dominican Republic

(24.6%), Paraguay (23.8%), and El Salvador (20.2%). Also, Honduras,

Panama, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Guatemala all had forest losses between

15 and20 percentin this decade, whereasMexico,Venezuela, andBolivia lost

more than 10 percent of their forests in only ten years. Overall, deforestation

in the 1980–90 decade in Latin America reduced native forests by more than

7 percent. This pattern has continued, with Guatemala showing a decrease

D. Bryant, D. Nielsen, and L. Tangley, The Last Frontier Forest: Ecosystems and Economy at the Edge

(Washington, DC, 1997).

FAO, FAOSTAT database, Rome.

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356 Otto T. Solbrig

of almost 17 percent of its forests in the 1990–2000 period and Central

America and the Caribbean showing a 10.8 percent loss of forest in that

period. The loss of tropical forests in South America was considerably less,

at 4 percent for the last ten years (representing an annual loss of 0.4%). Yet

some countries such as Ecuador (12%), Bolivia (5.7%), Venezuela (5.4%),

and Mexico (4.4%) had losses well above the average. Brazil’s loss, at 2.3

percent in the last ten years, was slightly below the South American average.

These ﬁgures, as bad as they are, indicate a slight decreasing tendency in

deforestation rates, but not very much.

There is a great deal of uncertainty and inconsistency in the ﬁgures

regarding deforestation presented by different agencies. In part this has

to do with the deﬁnition of undisturbed forests and with the technical

difﬁculties involved in estimating deforestation over such vast areas. Satellite

images can be used but they cannot ascertain how much of an extant forest is

modiﬁed or partially logged. Yet regardless of the accuracy of the ﬁgures, it is

clear that the problem is serious. According to FAO, South American forests

that account for 25 percent of the world’s forests, in the 1990–2000 period,

accounted for 50 percent of the lands that were deforested.

The reasons for this high rate of deforestation are manifold. They vary,

as is to be expected, from one region to another. Commercial logging is

an important factor, but not the most important in every region. Demand

for tropical woods has increased worldwide and the enormous reduction

in the forests of the Far East has put enormous pressure on American

forests. Commercial logging is most intense in areas with good communi-

cations. Commercial logging does not normally deforest an area because

only a few species are of commercial value. The construction of logging

roads, however, allows the penetration of squatters and settlers into logged

areas.

Transformation of forested land for agriculture and particularly cattle

raising is probably the principal cause of deforestation. The advance of

the agricultural frontier, in turn, is related to the demographic growth of

Latin America, to agricultural modernization in the better lands, and to

government policy (see the next section). Cattle raising has been attributed

to the demand of the United States market for cheap meat, especially

by fast-food restaurants (the “hamburger connection”). Although there is

a connection, especially in Central America, this reason has been much

exaggerated. Extensive cattle raising for the domestic market in frontier

regions with poor communications is the most popular economic activity,

especially when there are government incentives, such as in Brazil.

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Economic Growth and Environmental Change 357

the impact of the expanding agricultural frontier in

the lowland tropics

Oneofthe salient characteristics of Latin America, especially tropical South

America, in the last ﬁfty years has been the move toward the interior of

the continent. This movement has been spearheaded by the construction

of roads by governments eager to open new territories to colonization and

funded by international agencies hoping to encourage economic devel-

opment. The principal activities at these new frontiers have been peas-

ant agriculture, growing both food and illegal crops; extensive ranching;

logging; forest-product extraction; and mining. The unregulated nature

of many of these activities has created serious social and environmental

problems.

The changes have been quite dramatic. The overall agricultural area

in Latin America increased by 15 percent between 1965 and 1992.How-

ever, many countries saw much higher increases. Between 1965 and 1992,

agricultural land in Costa Rica expanded by 84.6 percent, in Ecuador

by 68.1 percent, in Paraguay by 60.9 percent, in Brazil by 47 percent,

and in Cuba by 38.7 percent. Furthermore, Panama, Nicaragua, Chile,

Honduras, and Guatemala experienced increases of more than 20 percent

in land dedicated to agriculture. Agriculture expanded for the most part

into areas previously occupied by forests. Much of the new agriculture is

characterized by low technology, low capital, and high labor inputs, and

much of what it produces is for self-consumption. Yet there also was an

increase in the growing of export crops in these countries. Many coun-

tries, most notably Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, saw enormous increases in

productivity.

Brazil presents a paradigmatic case. Two different types of agricultural

expansion took place in Brazil. One is the expansion of high-input, com-

mercial agriculture that took place mainly in the old agricultural areas of

the southern states of S

ao Paulo, Paran

a, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande

do Sul, as well as in newly opened savanna lands in the states of Goias,

Mato Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul. The other type of agriculture is

small-holder agriculture in frontier regions in the Amazon basin, especially

in the states of Rondonia, Acre, and Par

The process had its start with the intensiﬁcation and modernization of

agriculture in the southern states of S

ao Paulo, Paran

a, Santa Catarina, and

Rio Grande do Sul in the 1960s. One result of this process was that the

larger and better capitalized farms started displacing the small, traditional

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358 Otto T. Solbrig

farmers, most of whom went bankrupt and were forced to sell their land.

These displaced farmers then moved to the newly opened areas on the fron-

tier, especially in the states of Rondonia, Acre, and Goias. The government

of Brazil, at the time, encouraged this. Fearing an inﬂux of landless peasants

into the cities, it embarked on an ambitious program of road construction

and rural colonization of the Amazon region. The ﬁrst project was the

Transamazonian highway,

built in the early 1970s. This project was a dis-

mal failure because fewer than ten thousand families were relocated. The

next project, however, the paving of Br 360 from Cuiaba to Porto Velho in

Rondonia and its prolongation to Rio Branco in the state of Acre, and the

associated colonization project, unleashed a massive movement of small

farmers into the forest margin areas of these two territories that were soon

to become states. These projects were ﬁnanced by loans from the World

Bank.

In spite of well-intentioned plans to protect the forest and set aside

Indian reserves, the population pressure at the frontier produced signiﬁcant

landscape transformation, deforestation, the destruction of native Indian

lands, and, in some cases, the virtual destruction of certain native ethnic

groups.

The dynamics of this process are worth describing. INCRA, the col-

onization agency of the Brazilian government, allots eighty to one hun-

dered hectare plots of forest in designated areas. Pioneer settlers clear,

on the average, one to three hectares a year and plant beans, corn, and rice,

the Brazilian food staples, mostly for home consumption. The ashes of

the burned trees serve as fertilizer, but given the extreme poverty of the

soils, within two to three years, crop yields are too low to justify the labor

of cultivating the exhausted land. The colono then deforests a new agri-

cultural parcel, and transforms the old parcels into pasture and begins to

build a herd of cattle. Although the law only allows him to deforest half

of the plot, such strictures are seldom enforced. After a few years, the now

“improved” plot (no forest, some pasture) is sold to either new settlers or

local ranchers. The colono then moves on to open a new plot farther down

the road. In this manner, a wave of pioneer settlers deforests the forest

border, leaving behind a tropical grassland for the ranchers. According to

the intensity of the management, these grasslands have a lifetime of twenty

years or more. Very persistent weeds of difﬁcult and costly control then

invade the ﬁelds, at which point they are abandoned.

N. J. H. Smith, Rainforest Corridors (Berkeley, CA, 1982).

B. Rich, Mortgaging the Earth (Boston, 1994).

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Economic Growth and Environmental Change 359

the growth of agriculture and cattle ranching in

savanna areas

Not all tropical lowlands are covered with forests in Latin America. A

signiﬁcant area in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia is

the domain of savannas known as llanos, campos, chaco,orcerrado.By

deﬁnition, savannas are areas with a continuous cover of grasses and a

discontinuous layer of woody vegetation that can be shrubby and very

sparse or formed by sizable trees and fairly dense, and every conceivable

intermediate condition. Although the transformation of savannas is not

covered under the rubric of deforestation, they have been affected by the

advancing agricultural frontier as much or more than forested areas.

Latin American tropical savannas have experienced a very aggressive agri-

cultural frontier in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly

in the Brazilian cerrados but also in Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Contrary to the somewhat disorganized and traditional agriculture in

frontier forest regions, in savannas regions of Latin America, agricul-

ture has been technically advanced and capital intensive for agronomic

reasons.

Latin American savanna soils are among the worst for agriculture any-

where. For the most part, they are highly acidic, with a pH below 5;very

low nutrient content, especially phosphorous, calcium, and nitrogen; and

a high concentration of heavy metals – chieﬂy iron and aluminum. Only

the very specialized ﬂora of the region can naturally grow in these soils.

Agriculture is not possible without expensive intervention. Fields must be

limed in order to change the acidity and neutralize the negative effect of

aluminum, and heavy doses of phosphorous and nitrogen must be applied.

Only then is agriculture possible. Such interventions are expensive, with

costs in the order of 800 to 1,000 dollars per hectare.

It is clear that only

well-ﬁnanced farmers can operate here. The case of the Brazilian savannas

known as cerrado is a good example.

Until the late 1960s, agriculture in the cerrado was restricted to ﬂood-

plains along watercourses where pockets of good soil are found. Corn,

beans, rice, and cotton were the principal crops in these enclaves, occupied

for the most part by small family farms and producing for the internal

market. The rest of the area was dedicated to extensive cattle raising, also

E. Wagner, “Desenvolvimento da regi

ao dos Cerrados,” in W. Goedert, ed., Solos dos Cerrados.

Tecnologias e estrat

egias de manejo (S

ao Paulo, 1985) 19–31.

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360 Otto T. Solbrig

for domestic consumption. This changed with the arrival of the military

governments in 1964.

Oneofthe goals of the military governments was to increase agricultural

production so as to increase and diversify exports and create the savings

needed for industrialization.

Credits on very favorable terms were offered

to farmers. It was this policy that modernized the agriculture of the southern

states and started the migration of small farmers to the forest edges described

previously. Some displaced farmers from the south, those technologically

best prepared and who knew how to obtain credit, also moved into the

cerrado area. In a short time, the cerrado became a major producer of

soybeans and helped Brazil become the principal exporter of this oilseed in

the world.

In 1970, only 43 percent of the total area of the states of Goias, Mato

Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul, approximately 63.5 million hectares, was

used – mostly for a very extensive cattle-raising operation. By 1985, already

30.6 million additional hectares had been transformed. The expansion of

world demand for soybeans, especially from Europe, has been one of the

principal factors for the development of agriculture in the Brazilian cerrado.

In 1975, the cerrado area already produced approximately 6 percent of the

soybean production of Brazil. By the 1990s, there were about 1.4 million

hectares of soybeans in the cerrado, representing more than 25 percent of

Brazil’s production. The cerrado also produced 13 percent of the rice crop

of Brazil and approximately 16 percent in the case of maize.

In fewer

than ﬁfty years, some ﬁfty million hectares of savannas have been replaced

by either crops or artiﬁcial pastures, about the same surface that has been

deforested in the entire country in that same period.

Cattle raising in the cerrado, which used to be very extensive, has also

been modernized and production intensiﬁed. Until recently, the only form

of management used to be the burning of the range toward the end of

the dry period. One of the changes that has taken place, especially in the

southern and central portions (states of Goias, Mato Grosso do Norte, and

Mato Grosso) has been the replacement of the native grasses with planted

pastures of introduced African grasses of the genera Bracchiaria, Panicum,

Hyparhenia, and Melinis.Burning is still part of range management, with

C. A. Klink, A. G. Moreira, and Otto Solbrig, “Ecological Impact of Agricultural Development in

the Brazilian Cerrados,” in M. D. Young and O. T. Solbrig, eds., The World’s Savannas (New York,

1993), 93–120.

C. J. R. Alho and E. Souza Martins, De gr

ao em gr

ao, o Cerrado perde espac¸o (Brasilia, 1995).

G. Sarmiento, La transformaci

on de los ecosistemas de la Am

erica Latina (Buenos Aires, 2000).

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Economic Growth and Environmental Change 361

negative environmental consequences, but yields are up and so is the animal

carrying capacity.

Burning has the effect of reducing the regeneration of the rich woody

vegetation. Slowly the region is becoming a grassy savanna – that is, a

landscape of grasses with scattered trees. Fires also spread into adjacent

forests where they can burn enormous surfaces and are another contributor

to the reduction of the rainforests.

One effect of this intensive ranching operation, as well as intensive agri-

culture, is to reduce the need for labor. Furthermore, export prices have

been dropping steadily, cutting into proﬁt margins. In this context, small

operators cannot compete because their costs are higher. It all results in

a decrease of the rural population that migrates either to the cities (the

majority) or to the forest margins. It also has engendered a strong protest

movement in Brazil of landless peasants (Sem Terra) that advocates land

reform.

Similar processes are taking place in savanna areas in Bolivia, in the

dry Chaco area of Argentina and Paraguay, and to a lesser extent in

Venezuela. It is estimated that in another ten to twenty years, most of the

savanna areas of Latin America will have been transformed for agriculture or

ranching.

intensiﬁcation of commercial agriculture outside of

the savannas

Commercial agriculture has expanded on the better lands from Mexico to

Argentina and Chile (Table 9.2). The sector serves principally the export

markets of Europe, Asia, and the United States with a variety of products:

Colombian and Central American coffee, soybeans from Brazil and

Argentina (but also Paraguay and Bolivia), and vegetables and fruits from

Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.

Agriculture the world over has become transformed in the last ﬁfty years

from a family enterprise serving mostly local urban centers to a vast com-

mercial activity serving the world market through food conglomerates.

Most family farms have become incorporated as businesses and become

larger to reap the beneﬁts of scale. In the process, capital has replaced

labor, and a number of regional businesses that used to serve the farmer –

suppliers, banks, insurance agents, etc. – located in small rural towns

have tended to be replaced by big businesses operating out of large cities.

Small towns increasingly are becoming ghost towns. This change is most