Structural Adjustment and Agricultural Performance: the Chilean Case

Abstract

Any analysis of the development of the forestry, agriculture and livestock sector of the Latin American countries, particularly with regard to the last 20 years, must be made against the back-drop of the industrialisation process carried out in the region from the mid-thirties onwards. The impact which this process had on the economic development profile of the countries of Latin America was felt forcefully in the stagnation suffered by the agricultural sectors of the region. This phenomenon, generated by policies designed to support a development process based on industrialisation through import substitution, severely distorted the profitability of activities in the forestry, agriculture and livestock sectors, which began to lose importance in terms of their contribution to output.