Land Tenure and Agricultural Systems in [Country Name]
Land Tenure Forms
Private Land Owners: Natural or legal persons owning land with legal title, possessing rights to alienate, usufruct, lease, or donate, subject to existing laws. This category includes:
- Laborer-Owners: Also known as “conuqueros” or smallholders, cultivating less than one hectare for subsistence.
- Independent Smallholders: Generally smallholders growing vegetables, selling some produce in cities to purchase consumer goods, thus earning a subsistence income. They use rudimentary tools and family labor.
- Venture Capitalists: Subcategories based on economic power, ranging from independent smallholders transitioning to capitalism to large capitalists. They represent the capitalist form of land tenure and use.
- Large Landowners/Former Landowners in Transition: Characterized by a minority controlling most of the land, with few owners possessing vast holdings.
Tenants: Producers paying a rental fee for exploiting land owned by others.
Mediators: Producers exploiting land through agreements with owners or lessees, sharing the obtained fruits according to established proportions and bearing economic risks jointly.
Sharecroppers: Producers exploiting land under agreement with the owner, paying cash for the right to use it.
Occupants: Producers using public or private land, with or without owner consent, peacefully and continuously, without payment.
Mixed Systems: Producers using land under two or more tenure forms.
Settled by the National Agrarian Institute (IAN) with provisional titles, referring to producers benefiting from agrarian reform, located on rural settlement lands.
Latifundio
Characterized by land monopoly, with large tracts owned by a few. Features:
- Absolute Idleness: Land owned but not worked in any way.
- Smallholdings and Absenteeism: Landowners creating smallholding estates, delivering small lots to extract rents and secure labor.
- Production-Consumption or Lack of Technique: Weak production materials, lacking technical potential, using rudimentary tools.
- Underproduction: Very low productivity, resulting in subsistence consumption.
Smallholder
A form of private property or land use characterized by small portions of land held by many. Defined as an operating unit producing just enough for the producer and family’s survival.
Agricultural Production Systems
Two main systems exist: traditional/subsistence and modern/business.
Traditional System
Characteristics:
- Production unit is the “conuco” or small plot, using slash-and-burn techniques.
- Production directed towards family consumption, with surpluses exchanged or sold for manufactures.
- Utilizes environmental resources: soil, rainfall seasonality, and water.
- Employs rudimentary techniques: wooden plow, machete, “chicora,” logging, burning, often neglecting land, leading to soil depletion.
- Family provides the workforce.
- Very low production and productivity, resulting in a poor standard of living and social, cultural, and economic exclusion.
- Geographically dispersed across the country.
Modern System
Characteristics:
This system adopts modern techniques, such as crop rotation, mechanical plowing, fertilizer use, and irrigation. It is stimulated by industrial development, requiring raw materials, and by population growth, particularly in urban areas, increasing demand for farm products.
- Employs wage labor, with production aimed at local, regional, national, and sometimes export markets.
- Makes better use of natural resources, seeking to improve production and productivity.
- Geographically located in valleys, mountain hollows, and coastal regions in the west-central High Plains.