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Honduras AGRICULTURE
Land Use
Unavailable
Figure 6. Economic Activity, 1993
The total land area of Honduras is 11.2 million
hectares, of
which a scant 1.7 million hectares (about 15 percent) are
well
suited for agriculture. Most land in Honduras is covered
by
mountains, giving rise to the country's nickname, "the
Tibet of
Central America." Nevertheless, the Honduran economy has
always
depended almost exclusively on agriculture, and in 1992
agriculture
was still the largest sector of the economy, contributing
28
percent to the GDP
(see
fig. 6; and
table 5; Appendix A).
Less than
half of Honduras's cultivable land was planted with crops
as
recently as the mid-1980s. The rest was used for pastures
or was
forested and was owned by the government or the banana
corporations. Potential for additional productivity from
fallow
land was questionable, however, because much of Honduras's
soil
lacks the thick volcanic ash found elsewhere in Central
America. In
addition, by 1987 about 750,000 hectares of Honduran land
had been
seriously eroded as a result of misuse by cattle ranchers
and
slash-and-burn squatters who planted unsuitable food
crops.
The Honduran government and two banana
companies--Chiquita
Brands International and Dole Food Company--owned
approximately 60
percent of Honduras's cultivable land in 1993. The banana
companies
acquired most of their landholdings in the early twentieth
century
in return for building the railroads used to transport
bananas from
the interior to the coast. Much of their land remained
unused
because it lacked irrigation. Only about 14 percent of
cultivated
land was irrigated in 1987. Most land under cultivation in
1992 was
planted in bananas, coffee, and specialized export crops
such as
melons and winter vegetables.
Data as of December 1993
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