GEOG 3515

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GEOG 3515

• The Geography of South America

Class 17 Economic GeographyModern Agriculture
in South America
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Large Farming Units

• We have previously discussed traditional
  agriculture by highlighting the role played by
  the minifundio the subsistence and peasant
  farmers.
• We also mentioned the three large-scale units of
  farming, two of which can be considered modern
  and advanced the commercial plantation and the
  estancia cattle ranches and one that is very
  much an anachronism, redolent of a former time
  the hacienda.
• Only recently has the hacienda unit started to
  give way to more productive model of farming -
  rather than a neglected, semi-feudal system
  harking back to the encomienda, absentee
  landowners are beginning to lease their land to
  tenant farmers that can put it to more productive
  use.

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Broad Agricultural Zones of South America
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Estancias

• Predominantly cattle ranches, the estancias
  represent vast tracts of land in the southern
  Pampa region.
• Grazed extensively for the production of export
  beef or sheep, either deep frozen or canned, the
  estancias are highly profitable farming units.
• Adopting modern livestock techniques including
  cross-breeding to improve livestock quality and
  range management to improve pasture quality, the
  estancias make Uruguay and Argentina famous for
  their meat which is a significant export item for
  their respective economies.
• Farms are usually run and worked by whites the
  gauchos famously rugged and laconic cattlemen
  of the region with their trademark berets and
  bullwhips.

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Plantations

• Historically owned by multinational corporations
  like the United and Standard Fruit Companies
  (Dole and Chiquita), plantations are now
  frequently locally owned but under contract to
  the multinationals that handle the transport and
  distribution to overseas markets.
• The most prevalent tropical plantation crops in
  South America include sugar cane, coffee,
  bananas, cotton, pineapple, oil palm, cacao,
  sisal, and jute.
• More recently developed tropical plantation crops
  include citrus, mangoes, papaya, guava and other
  popular fruits.
• Added to these large-scale tropical plantations
  is an increasing diversity of smaller-scale
  plantations in the more temperate and the
  Mediterranean-type sub-regions, growing grapes
  (wine and table), blueberries, apples and other
  valued crops for sale in the winter seasons of
  the northern hemisphere.

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The modern plantation a sophisticated operation
growing wine grapes in Chile
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Regional Extensions

• Sugar Cane is widely grown and is predominantly
  in the coastal tropical lowlands.
• Coffee in South America is a significant
  commodity produced on cooler, acidic soils in
  Colombia and Brazil, the latter of which produces
  some 1/3 of world beans, most lower grade.
• Bananas are also very significant, limited to
  lowland, coastal and river valley location.
• Northern Brazil is the main region in which many
  of the other types of tropical plantations are
  found cacao for example, leaving cotton to be
  grown in the drier central lowlands, oil palm on
  the northwestern shores, and jute in the Amazon
  region (see Ch 10)

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Coffee from Brazil
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Plantation woes

• Competition from many nations across a number of
  regions, along with periodic gluts and shortfalls
  in production due to storms or disease has made
  plantation crops prices highly unstable.
• In the case of sugar, a glut of tropical cane
  sugar combined with a rise in the production of
  high-fructose syrup from surpluses of corn in
  North America has led to declining revenues and
  the elimination of many sugar plantations and
  mills.
• Workers worries have been made worse by the
  increase in mechanization of plantation
  activities, from planting to harvesting.
• Plantation areas have been zones of
  out-migration, poverty and political unrest.

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The Green Revolution

• The post-WWII period saw tremendous advances in
  modern, commercial agriculture that led to
  increases in crop yields of 500 or more.
• This was called the green revolution a
  combination of plant breeding, development and
  application of pesticides and chemical
  fertilizers, mechanization, and irrigation.
• The revolution gained hold in South Americas
  larger, commercial farms, especially those geared
  for export and mass-production of the staples
  eaten in the large urban centers (for example,
  grains).

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Environmental Consequences

• As elsewhere, the green revolution has carried a
  price erosion, pesticide and fertilizer
  contamination, ecological damage.
• Looser environmental regulations in South America
  and a lack of controls on the type and nature of
  pesticide use has led to excessive use and worker
  exposures.
• Hybridization and, increasingly, genetic
  modification is leading to a widespread
  homogenization of grain and vegetable production,
  creating a reduced agricultural gene pool among
  the farming community and a loss of traditional
  varietals that were grown and propagated in situ.
• Small farmers have been largely bypassed, lacking
  the resources to adopt the changes required to
  expand yields.
• The net result has been to increase per capita
  food production in South America since 1980 by
  about 17, although gains are starting to slip
  and population growth exceed food output growth,
  eroding this margin.

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Export Oriented Crops

• As a source of foreign income, South America has
  rapidly expanded its commercial crop production
  since 1980, in many key areas by around 100 (see
  Table 10.9).
• Sophisticated refrigerated transport and air
  freight systems coupled with low wholesale prices
  allow South American farmers to be competitive in
  the US and Europe.
• Grassification of forests and scrub and the
  introduction of various pasto tierno or higher
  quality pasture grasses into the Pampa and grazed
  plateau areas has vastly increased cattle numbers
  and productivity.
• South America continues to lose 0.4-0.5 of its
  remaining forest area annually.

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Plantation Controversy

• Major questions exist over plantation style
  farming
• Is it sustainable given its monoculture basis
  that grows the same crop year-in and year out?
• Frequently labor intensive, profitability
  requires a large number of very poorly paid
  workers to live in the region.
• Oriented toward exports, plantations deprive the
  internal market of the best soils and land units
  on which to meet human demands for food.
• Beneficiaries of the green revolution, the large
  commercial monocultures use heavy doses of
  pesticide and fertilizers, leading to air, water
  and soil effects that can be harmful.
• Expansion of plantations usually comes at the
  expense of biodiverse tropical rainforest or
  lowland wetlands.