Agriculture in Bolivia
The role of agriculture in the Bolivian economy in the late 1980s expanded as the collapse of the tin industry forced the country to diversify its productive and export base.
Bolivia also suffered from the worst farming technology in South America and an insufficient network of research and extension institutions to reverse that trend.
The lack of new seed varieties, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation systems, together with the continued exhaustion of the highland soils, was responsible for the low yields.
Small farmers used at least half of their corn for human consumption, as animal feed, or for brewing chicha, the primary intoxicating beverage consumed by Bolivian Indians.
Promasor was particularly active in Santa Cruz, where its members also produced 20,000 tons a year of sorghum, a drought-resistant crop, from some 6,000 hectares of land.
[5] In 1988 the United States Agency for International Development (AID) provided 180,000 tons of wheat through its Public Law 480 (PL-480) Food for Peace Program.
Quinoa is rich in proteins, beneficial fatty acids, and vitamins, all of which are fostered by the biodiversity maintained by Indigenous farming techniques.
[12] This boom signaled a shift in Bolivia from Indigenous, sustainable farming practices to large-scale industrial production, including the new use of pesticides and other chemicals.
[5] Also common were alfalfa, rye, cassava, sweet potatoes and the fruits oranges, limes, grapes, apples, quince, papayas, peaches, plums, cherries, figs, avocadoes, pineapples, strawberries, bananas, and plantains.
[5] Cash crops of lesser importance included tobacco, tea, cocoa, and oilseeds, such as sesame, peanuts, castor beans, and sunflowers.
[5] In addition, farmers turned to coca for its quick economic return, its light weight, its yield of four crops a year, and the abundance of United States dollars available in the trade, a valuable resource in a hyperinflated economy.
[5] The cocaine industry had a generally deleterious effect on the Bolivian economy not to mention having a serious environmental impact on rivers and removal of forest for coca plantations.
[5] The cocaine trade greatly accelerated the predominance of the United States dollar in the economy and the large black market for currency, thereby helping to fuel inflation in the 1980s.
[5] Manufacturers in the Cochabamba area during the 1980s found it impossible to match the wages workers could gain in coca, making their supply of labor unreliable and thus harming the formal economy.
These high feed costs can be attributed to the increase in production using technology such as tractors, that substantially take a toll on the fertility of the soil and therefore the growth of natural vegetation.
[20] Although about 16 percent of the lowland farms were of subsistence size (five hectares or fewer), the great majority of the region's land was owned by medium-to-large landowners actively engaged in commercial agriculture.
[21] In addition, the reform process was hampered by price controls, a lack of extension services, inadequate credit, insufficient infrastructure, and regional conflicts between the highlands and lowlands.
[21] The government, which had once monopolized the production of many key crops, set prices, marketed goods, and closely controlled credit, now effectively withdrew from the sector.
[21] As a result, farmers in the late 1980s were in transition from a period characterized by import protection and close cooperation with the government to one of free competition with highly advanced international markets and contraband.
[22] Most highland farmers worked minifundia plots of staples and vegetables, such as potatoes, corn, haba beans, and quinoaa, the Bolivian cereal grain, selling only 30 percent of their output.
[22] Although Indians in the highlands terraced their steep fields in the Inca style, traditional farming techniques also made farmers vulnerable to frost, irregular rainfall, and erosion.
[22] Nevertheless, farmers in the valleys also relied on truckers for their marketing and suffered greater isolation than those on the Altiplano, particularly during the rainy season, October to April.
[22] Small farmers also continued to occupy Santa Cruz and many were responsible for the growing problems of deforestation because of slash-and-burn approaches to rice farming.
[22] An estimated 100,000 landless wage earners in the agricultural sector cut sugarcane or picked cotton in Santa Cruz or performed seasonal labor in Argentina.
[22] The use of purchased items such as fertilizers, tractors, and irrigation systems were extremely low in the 1980s because traditional farming methods continued to dominate.
[23] The signing of an accord for a natural gas pipeline with Brazil in 1988, however, improved Bolivia's prospects for manufacturing its own chemical fertilizers.
These irrigation systems consist of rudimentary web of canals supplied by rainfall with few regulatory schemes such as dams, which makes them very vulnerable to seasonality of rain.
For example, in western regions of Oruro, Potosi and Tarija, close to 45,000 square kilometers have low soil productivity on account of erosion.
[25] Agricultural runoff is one of the main contributors to water pollution in Bolivia, together with domestic municipal wastewater and dumping by industries and mines.
The greatest percentage of the pollution load is due to diffuse dumping from agricultural and fishing activities and runoffs of urban areas.
