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El Salvador Cotton
Salvadoran farmers did not produce much cotton until after
World War II, when several technological developments combined to
facilitate farming on the coastal lowlands. One of these was the
increased availability of drugs to combat malaria and yellow
fever; another was the production of cheap chemical insecticides
(insect infestation being the major obstacle to high cotton
yields in El Salvador); and yet another was the development
during World War II, when imports of cloth and clothing dried up,
of a domestic textile industry. During the 1950s, cotton
production increased fifteenfold. Production was boosted still
further in the 1960s by the completion of the Carretera Litoral,
the coastal highway running almost the length of the country
(see
fig. 7).
Although it was one of the country's top sources of export
revenue in the 1960s and 1970s, cotton was the major economic
casualty of the civil conflict, virtually disappearing as an
export commodity during the 1980s. The value of exports fell
precipitously, from US$87 million in 1979, to US$56 million in
1983, and to only US$2.3 million in 1987. Many plantations in the
eastern part of the country were abandoned as a result of the
violence, while other plantations affected by the land reform
shifted production to other crops. Those farms that continued to
operate reported declining yields and a virtual cessation of
investment and replanting. The cultivated area devoted to cotton
declined from 82,000 hectares in 1979 to only 27,000 hectares in
1986, a drop of almost 70 percent. Production of seed cotton
declined from 169,000 tons in 1979 to 55,000 tons in 1986.
Data as of November 1988
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