of Colombia into the 1960s of the Agricultural Sector The Development

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^The Development ^{of the} Agricultural Sector ^of Colombia

into the 1960s

Albert Berry

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The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s

Selección de pensadores antioqueños

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The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s Abstract

In the nineteen sixties in Colombia many politicians still believed that increases in agricultural production required capital intensive large production units, and Berry showed that employment and production could increase if technology and other inputs were delivered to medium and small farms.

These ideas supported policies of land reform, as long as it generated productive units of sufficient size. Berry also discussed the inevitability of solving extreme poverty in the rural area through rural urban migration, since given the large number of farms with insufficient land to guarantee a decent income, migration was called for to increase rural wages.

Keywords: Agricultural development, 1960-1969, agricultural policy, agricultural industry, Colombia.

Desarrollo del sector agrario en Colombia en la década de 1960 Resumen

En los años sesenta en Colombia muchos políticos todavía creían que los aumentos en la producción agrícola requerían grandes unidades de producción intensivas en capital y Berry mostró que el empleo y la producción podrían aumentar si la tecnología y otros insumos fueran entregados a fincas medianas y pequeñas.

Estas ideas apoyaban políticas de reforma agraria, siempre y cuando generaran unidades productivas de tamaño suficiente. Berry también discutió la inevita- bilidad de resolver la pobreza extrema en el área rural a través de la migración urbana rural, dado que dado el gran número de granjas con tierras insuficientes para garantizar un ingreso decente, se solicitó la migración para aumentar los salarios rurales.

Palabras clave: Desarrollo agrícola, 1960-1969, política agrícola, industria agro- pecuaria, Colombia.

Suggested citation

Berry, Albert. The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s. (2017). Bo- gotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario.

DOI: doi.org/10.12804/te9789587387421

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The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s

Selección de pensadores antioqueños

Albert Berry

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Colección Memoria Viva

Cover image:

[Detail] “Paisaje de montañas”. José Restrepo Rivera, watercolor, 53 x 75 cm.

In Poesía de la Naturaleza, Suramericana de Seguros, 1997

Editorial Universidad del Rosario

Carrera 7 Nº 12B-41, oficina 501 • Phone number 297 02 00 http://editorial.urosario.edu.co

First edition: Bogotá D.C., june 2017 ISBN: 978-958-738-741-4 (hard cover) ISBN: 978-958-738-742-1 (ebook) DOI: doi.org/10.12804/te9789587387421 Editorial coordination:

Editorial Universidad del Rosario Cover design and page layout:

Precolombi EU, David Reyes

Printer: Xpress. Estudio Gráfico y Digital S. A.

Printed and made in Colombia Impreso y hecho en Colombia

The concepts and opinions of this work are the sole responsability of its authors and don’t compromise Universidad del Rosario nor its institucional policies.

Berry, Albert

The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s / Albert Berry. – Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario, 2017.

xv, 1136 páginas - (Colección Memoria Viva) Incluye referencias bibliográficas.

Desarrollo agrícola - Colombia -- 1960-1969 / Política agrícola - Colombia -- 1960-1969 / Industrias agropecuarias - Colombia / I. Berry, Albert / II. Universidad del Rosario. Facultad de Economía / III. Título / IV. Serie.

338.18 SCDD 20

Catalogación en la fuente – Universidad del Rosario. Biblioteca

JDA marzo de 2017

Hecho el depósito legal que marca el Decreto 460 de 1995

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Content

Foreword ... ix

Miguel Urrutia Montoya

Presentation and Acknowledgments ... xi Introduction ... xiii Chapter I. An Introduction to the Development of Colombian

Agriculture and to Current Policy Issues... 1 Chapter II. The Growth Process: Increase in Traditional Inputs

Technological ... 117 Chapter III. Process of Growth of Specific Inputs: Evidence

on their Contribution to Growth of Output and to Changing

income distribution ... 255 Chapter IV. A Cross-Sectional and Micro Approach to an

Understanding of the Productivity of the Agricultural Sector ... 441 Chapter V. The Institutional Setting for Agricultural Development ... 543 Chapter VI. Welfare of the Agricultural Population Through Time

and its Determinants ... 699 Chapter VII. The Agricultural Sector as a Supplier of Foreign Exchange:

The Development of the Coffee Industry Present Export Prospects ... 753

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Chapter VIII. Comments on Some Current Policy Issues ... 793

Appendix tables

Section I. Aggregate Figures on Output, Area and Labor Force ... 876 Section IIa. Aggregate Figures: Capital Stocks, Investments

and Mechanization ... 904 Section IIb. Regional Estimates on Capital Stock, Investment and

Mechanization ... 957 Section III. The Production Function ... 964 Section IV. Land Distribution, Tenure and Use: National and Regional .... 976 Section VI. Technological Change: Research, Extension

and Modern Inputs ... 995 Section VII. Differential Input use and Other Characteristics

of Different Farm Sizes ... 1017 Section VIII. The Labor Force, Income Levels, Wage Rates, Living

Conditions, Migration, etc. ... 1062 Section IX. The Coffee Industry ... 1103 Section X. International Trade in Agricultural Products ... 1121

The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s

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Foreword

I have kept a bound copy of some of Albert Berry’s mimeographed studies on The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia, dated around 1971, as source material for my lectures on Colombia’s early economic develop- ment. I was therefore very glad to hear from Hernán Jaramillo that, after many decades, the Universidad del Rosario planned to publish the draft of The Development of the Agricultural Sector of Colombia into the 1960s. Upon hearing this news, I agreed to write a short foreword to the volume because I had used the material throughout the years in my courses on Colombian economic history and in my economic policy recommendations. Other researchers, including Salomón Kalmanovitz, also found Albert Berry’s 1960s papers useful for their studies on Colombian agriculture.

In this brief note I will mention which aspects of the work influenced Colombia’s later economic history, and to some extent public policy.

In the first place, the papers are remarkable for the wealth of data pre- sented. Albert used every kind of data available mid-century Colombia, particularly the 1960 agricultural census, as well as an array of local stud- ies that described production and demand for agricultural products. His tables on production and income generation by different-sized agricultural production units made it possible to calculate rural income distribution. In combination with the urban income distribution calculated by myself and Elsa de Sandoval, (see Miguel Urrutia y Albert Berry, (1975) La Distribución del Ingreso en Colombia) this made it clear that poverty was concentrated in the rural sector and suggested that public policy be mobilized to increase the productivity of small and medium-sized farms as the best way to di- minish a portion of extreme poverty.

This idea became government policy in the 1970s with the establish- ment of the Comprehensive Rural Development (Desarrollo Rural Integrado

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- dri) program, which was designed to invest in technology transfer, ru- ral infrastructure, and credit, in areas with a concentration of small and medium-sized agricultural units capable of generating acceptable levels of farm income. dri was not a substitute for land reform, as some critics maintained, but an attempt to improve rural incomes where land reform was difficult to implement but an increase in family income was possible within the existing land tenure.

In the 1960s, many politicians in Colombia still believed that increases in agricultural production required large, capital-intensive production units, and Berry showed that employment and production could increase if technology and other inputs were delivered to medium and small farms.

These ideas supported land reform policies, as long as they generated productive units of sufficient size. Berry also discussed the inevitability of solving extreme poverty in rural areas through rural-urban migration, since given the large number of farms with insufficient land to guarantee a decent income, migration was called for to increase rural wages.

Miguel Urrutia Montoya Bogotá, April 2017

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Presentation and Acknowledgments

The material of this book was circulated to a few friends and colleagues soon after it was written, while I was a member of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. For various reasons it was not revised and ed- ited for publication at that time. In view of the important events currently transpiring in and around the agricultural sector of Colombia and the pos- sible usefulness of additional historical material, it is now being published essentially as it was left in the late 1960s. I have not reviewed the available material in detail recently, so their may be errors of fact that I am not aware of, either in the numbers presented or of other sorts. Many useful studies of Colombian agriculture have been undertaken in the interim, though they may not have covered the same material as included here.

Because of the unrevised nature of the material the mode of presen- tation varies from chapter to chapter. Table numbers are not continuous (i.e. there may be no Table 5 in a given chapter) but their order has been maintained, sometimes through the use of decimals (e.g. Table 10.1). An attempt has been made to assure the accuracy of references in the text to tables that are located either in the text or in the appendix.

I am very grateful to Professor Hernan Jaramillo of Rosario University for suggesting the publication of the volume in one of our discussions of agriculture during my visit to the University over the first semester of 2014, and for arranging the derails of the process. I also thank Miguel Urrutia and several former colleagues at the Economic Growth Center for providing helpful comments some decades ago.

November 2016

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Editor’s note:

Facsimile edition, true copy of the

original submitted by the author.

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