Adjusting to Reality: the Impact of Structural Adjustment on Honduran Agriculture

Abstract

In the context of Central American agricultural development, academic interest has passed through various phases. In the seventies attention had been focused on Honduras where the two Agrarian Reform Laws represented perhaps the most radical attempt to resolve the land problem short of a popular revolution. The popular revolution in Nicaragua in 1979 turned attention in the eighties to the prospects and problems of agricultural collectivisation and production organisation, spawning a wealth of literature on the Sandinista agrarian transformation process. In the nineties the wheel has turned full circle and attention has again reverted to Honduras.

Research for this article was carried out with the financial support of OXFAM (UK) and CID (Cooperación para el Desarrollo). The author is grateful for both formal and informal comments made on earlier Spanish versions by Hugo Noé Pino, Ian Walker, Ana Lucía Restrepo, Mary Hallett and the other members of the agricultural research team (POSCAE — Posgrado en Economía y Planificación para el Desarrollo at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras), Rigoberto Sandoval Corea, Mario Posas, Raul Ruben, David Stanfield, Malcolm Childress and Jolyne Melmed-Sanjak. The article has also benefited from comments received on two further revised English drafts included in the Universities of Portsmouth and Manchester (International Development Centre) Discussion Paper Series.