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Ecuador Land Use and Tenure
Data on land use varied widely and were often considered by
analysts as unreliable or at best an approximation of actual
numbers. In the mid-1980s, for example, estimates of cropland
ranged from 1.6 to 2.5 million hectares out of the total land area
of 27.1 million hectares. Different sources put the amount of
pastureland at 4.4 or 4.8 million hectares. Estimates for the total
land area suitable for agriculture showed an even wider variation,
from less than 50 percent to as high as 90 percent. Over half of
the cultivated land was in the Costa (coastal region), about a
third in the Sierra, and the remainder dispersed throughout the
Oriente region. The Costa, with the exception of the area near the
Santa Elena Peninsula, had generally fertile land with a climate
conducive to agriculture. Altitude, rainfall, and soil composition
determined land use in the Sierra. The intermontane basins near
Quito and farther south near Cuenca and Loja offered the most
productive Sierra lands, whereas the basins surrounding Latacunga
and Riobamba had dry and porous soil and the least fertile lands.
Higher areas of the Sierra contained grasslands suitable only for
grazing or cold-tolerant crops, such as potatoes.
Modern land tenure patterns developed from Spanish colonial
land systems. The Spanish encountered large native populations in
the Sierra and established the encomienda system whereby the
crown granted individual colonists rights to land and the Indians
who lived there. This system gradually produced haciendas worked by
a "captive" labor force composed of huasipungueros
(see Spanish Colonial Era
, ch. 1;
Peasants
, ch. 2). These
huasipungueros worked without salary in return for the
farming rights to minifundios (small plots) on the
haciendas. In many cases, the huasipungueros were bought or
sold with the hacienda. Large-scale agriculture developed later in
the Costa, where farming for export used sharecroppers or paid
labor to harvest crops. The monetary labor system that developed in
the Costa began to compete with the feudal system of the Sierra for
cheap labor.
Pressure to reform feudal agricultural practices came from
abroad, from humanitarian and liberal elements within the country,
and from large landowners in the Costa, who needed additional cheap
labor. A land reform law enacted in 1964, the Land Reform, Idle
Lands, and Settlement Act, outlawed the huasipungo system
and also set up the Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and
Settlement (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y
Colonización--IERAC) to administer the law and to expropriate idle
arable land for redistribution to farmers. The law outlawed
absentee ownership and limited the size of holdings to 800 hectares
of arable land in the Sierra, 2,500 hectares of arable land in the
Costa, and 1,000 hectares of pastureland in either region. The law
also set the minimum amount of land to be granted in the
redistribution at 4.8 hectares. Revisions of the law in the early
1970s required that all land with absentee landlords be sold to the
tenants and that squatters be permitted to acquire title to land
they had worked for three years.
Although IERAC made some progress initially, political
opposition slowed implementation of the land reform act. IERAC
received little government funding and was not permitted to
actively encourage expropriation. Later amendments to the land
reform act exempted all farms that were efficiently run. In
addition, redistributed land was frequently poor or on
mountainsides because the large landowners kept fertile valley
lands for themselves. Except for a few showcase examples, farmers
on minifundios received no government assistance or services
to make the plots productive. In spite of these difficulties,
however, by 1984 over 700,000 hectares had been distributed to
79,000 peasants.
Distribution of the land remained highly unequal. In 1982, 80
percent of the farms consisted of less than ten hectares; yet these
small farms accounted for only 15 percent of the farmland. Five
percent of the farms had more than fifty hectares, but these large
farms represented over 55 percent of the land under cultivation. In
addition, minifundios were more likely to be found in the
Sierra in areas of poor soil or with poorer growing conditions than
in other areas.
Agricultural censuses revealed that over three-quarters of the
farms were worked by their owners. About 12 percent of the farms
were occupied by families that did not hold title to the land but
rented it, sometimes hiring additional laborers. Sharecroppers or
communal farmers cultivated the remaining 7 percent.
Although intensely cultivated, minifundios in the Sierra
could not sustain the region's occupants. Because of the higher
wages for nonagricultural jobs, many farmers held unskilled jobs in
the cities while family members stayed on the land to grow crops
for home use or for sale
(see Migration and Urbanization
, ch. 2).
A study in the late 1970s indicated that over half of small farm
earnings came from off the farm.
Patterns of cultivation ranged from primitive to modern, with
the more modern methods generally used in the Costa, where much of
the production was geared for export. In 1982 Ecuador had fewer
than 7,000 tractors in use. Ox-drawn plows were used on some farms,
and digging sticks were used for cultivation on slopes. High prices
limited the use of chemicals; manure was the common form of
fertilizer in the Sierra, but farmers had increased the use of
pesticides and fungicides.
Sizeable areas of land, estimated at over 320,000 hectares,
were under irrigation using ditches dug by individual farmers, and
about 40,000 hectares were irrigated under government-supported
irrigation projects. State support for irrigation schemes began in
1944 with the creation of the Ecuadorian Institute of Hydraulic
Resources (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Recursos Hidráulicos--Inerhi).
Inerhi's largest project, inaugurated in 1970, brought water to
10,000 hectares of land in Pichincha Province.
Data as of 1989
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