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Cotton and Cattle in the Pacific Lowlands of Central America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

James J. Parsons
James J. Parsons*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The well-drained, fluvio-volcanic outwash plain of the Pacific coast of Central America, stretching from the Mexican border to the Gulf of Nicoya, has undergone remarkable change in recent years. Malarial control, highway and port construction, and the initiative of governments and private land-owners, have made this the most active zone of agricultural development in Central America. Large-scale mechanized cotton farms and livestock ranches have been eating rapidly into the dry tropical forest that until recently covered most of this coastal apron at the foot of the 700-mile long Central American volcanic chain, producing important new sources of employment and foreign exchange earnings. Acreage in sugar cane and essential oil grasses (citronella and lemon grass) also has been expanding, and the booming shrimp export trade has added yet another fillup to the economies of these pocket-sized countries so long plagued with coffee or banana monoculture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1965 , pp. 149 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1965

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Footnotes

*

Author's Note: The field work on which this study is based was supported by Contract 3656 (03) NR388067, Geography Branch, Office of Naval Research. J.J.P.

References

1 On the physical environment of Central America and its agricultural potentialities see, e.g., Simmons, C. S., Tárano, J. M. and Pinto, J. H., Clasificación de reconocimiento de los suelos de la República de Guatemala (Guatemala: Instituto Agropecuario Nacional, 1959)Google Scholar; Lauer, W., Vegetation, Landnutzung und Agrarpotential in El Salvador (Kiel: Schriften des Geographischen Instituts der Universitat Kiel, Band xvi, Heft l, 1956)Google Scholar; Organización de Estados Americanos, Informe oficial de la misión 105 de asistencia técnica directa a Honduras sobre reforma agraria y desarrollo agrícola (Washington, 1962), 2 vols.; Taylor, B. W., Ecological Land Use Surveys in Nicaragua (Managua: Instituto de Fomento Nacional, 1959-61)Google Scholar, 2 vols.; Sandner, G., La colonización agrícola de Costa Rica (San José: Instituto Geográfico de Costa Rica, 1962)Google Scholar.

2 See, e.g., Smith, R. S., “índigo Production and Trade in Colonial Guatemala,” Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1959, pp. 181–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bergmann, J. F., “Cacao and its Production in Central America,” Tijdshrift voor Economische en Sociale Geographic, February 1957, pp. 43–49 Google Scholar.

3 Sears, P. B., “An Ecological View of Land Use in Middle America,” Ceiba (Tegucigalpa), 3:157–165 (1953)Google Scholar.

4 Stevenson, J. H., Cotton Production in Central America (Washington D. C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, November 1963)Google Scholar.

5 Estimates of Cotton Division, Foreign Agricultural Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, August 1964.

6 Annual Reports, Cotton Experiment Station and Fiber Laboratory, Guatemala, 1959-62 (typescript).

7 Ibid., 1962.

8 Statistics on beef imports have been calculated from U. S. Bureau of the Census, FT 110: United States Imports of Merchandise for Consumption, 1963 Annual and April 1964 Monthly Summary.

9 The New York Times, August 19, 1964.

10 Statistics on frozen shrimp imports have been calculated from U. S. Bureau of the Census, FT 110, op. cit., 1963 Annual.