Incorporating Bolivian agriculture into the competitive agricultural market in the context of the FTAA requires state policies that encourage investments in this sector
There are new economic paradigms imposed by the new globalized and cybernetized capitalism. This being the case, the States will continue –more than before- to move destinations based on the economy, rather than on social considerations. It is obvious that those aspects inherent to societal work related to production, industry, commerce, manufacturing and of course the land are being permanently analyzed not only by statesmen, they deserve the attention of those who recognize that the market, by imposing its strict guidelines on the march social, has managed to establish new guidelines for agriculture, agricultural, agro-industrial and also agro-social. Therefore, the agrarian question in Bolivia is permanent and must be addressed urgently, periodically.
This latent agrarian question pushes us to design legal and social considerations that, hand in hand with the economic, contribute to discuss and debate bases that sustain coherent and functional State Policies.
What should be done with our agriculture, for example, in the next 15 years? Fundamental question that we never asked ourselves to define what will be done with the production system to be used, to replace the current semi-feudal system where the peasant is only a superficial part of the productive network, not having been taken into account to increase / make more efficient models of agricultural production and the entrepreneurial investor in agriculture is not supported or even less sponsored in their initiatives. The much talked about mechanization of agriculture conceived in 1953 never came because the Revolution was truncated due to the emerging militarism, political concepts prevailed over socioeconomic ones.
Anyway, this is not a time for regrets With the INRA Law, those dedicated to agriculture, on a large scale or individual or community property, will be subject to determinations of the free market model, often drastic because the State still has nothing defined to promote the already rude agricultural activity. Until when will the agribusiness owner be left to his own devices in his economic work, enduring gales from that "invisible hand" of Adam Smith configured by the new capitalism?
The comment of the Bolivian agrarian expert Luis Antezana Ergueta must be taken into account, who stated that the INRA Law is based on those studies carried out by politician Kelly Sánchez and in case of not making immediate adjustments for the formation of State Policies directing the subject agrarian "we will travel the path of failure because the current main concepts of property and land tenure as well as the current productive methods retain feudal characteristics…" (1), logically irreconcilable with the prevailing economic model today.
Definitely, the urgency of structuring bases is imposed so that through new State Policies it is proposed to agribusinesses with specialized regulations that they sponsor, from the State, fiscal tax facilities and subsidies, opening of lines of credit for development, replacement of development banks of second floor, promotion of technology transfer, zero tariff on imports of machinery, supplies, spare parts and agricultural technology, for example, allowing our producers to enter the increasingly competitive international agricultural market, in addition to engaging in dynamic negotiations in integration markets for our value-added agricultural products. That is the fundamental state task: to empower agriculture, get it out of its stagnation and its level of "cultural" productivity and catapult it,via convenient State Policies, to international and national markets.
In this new context, to relaunch agriculture to boost our slowed down national economy, peasants and native peoples should be immediately integrated into production urging the formation and financial sponsorship of agricultural cooperatives. It would not be crazy to think that annually one percent of the general budget of the nation of each fiscal management is fully programmed to activities promoting investment, refinancing and credit support and extension of agribusiness work.
As agrarian property is a fundamental right universally and historically linked to well-being, to the economic, the action of the second-tier banks and social development should direct actions for the genetic improvement of seeds, specialized technical research and the promotion and extension of agricultural work as the most effective means - in this century - to combat poverty. The food security so deeply questioned in Bolivia by the FAO due to the underutilization of arable land since in our homeland there are barely a million cultivable hectares (2), it is a fundamental objective that must be overcome, through an agrarian norm that reflects in a coherent and exhaustive way the much mentioned State Policies for agriculture that allow the emergence of new initiatives and investments for the sector.The INRA Law is useless if at present slow processes of reorganization and improvement of the right to own land sleep in INRA offices throughout the country. How many hectares were legally cleared? Few in relation to the cost of financial opportunity that was lost by not having the papers of our lands up to date to serve us as an instrument of bank guarantee, for example, to be used to improve our crops of cotton, soybean, sorghum, corn and wheat.How many hectares were legally cleared? Few in relation to the cost of financial opportunity that was lost by not having the papers of our lands up to date to serve us as an instrument of bank guarantee, for example, to be used to improve our crops of cotton, soybean, sorghum, corn and wheat.How many hectares were legally cleared? Few in relation to the cost of financial opportunity that was lost by not having the papers of our lands up to date to serve us as an instrument of bank guarantee, for example, to be used to improve our crops of cotton, soybean, sorghum, corn and wheat.
The land is not only an economic good, although it is immersed within the constant changes imposed by the market, it constitutes much more than the mere economic concept. Land is the historically essential social asset to fulfill a function aimed at the development of society as a whole, as indicated in the Constitutional Charter. Probably the historical moments that served as a framework for the birth of Law 03464 (in 1953) and the INRA Law (1996) have been preceded by deep social pressures, impregnated with sociological nuances.
At the birth of the Agrarian Reform, the profound revolutionary change is noted as a precedent, which broke old schemes of political thought and incorporated into the central dynamics of the State the pariah, as was the Indian before 52. For the birth of the Law INRA converged new sociological motivations as social actors: pressures from community and indigenous groups and the international weight of the declared decade of the rights of indigenous peoples. It is time that in the search for our second Agrarian Reform, State Policies are drawn up to direct / manage agriculture and its production,discarding that false custom made reality for many thousands of hectares in the country that "the land belongs to those who do not work it but do own it" and rather the social mandate is revitalized, the land belongs to those who work it, with efficient productive methods, fundamental postulate of the Agrarian Reform, the main historical fact of socioeconomic change in our country.
The opening of local and provincial roads, the commercialization of agricultural products in mass consumption markets, investment credits, agricultural joint venture contracts of such success in mining and other commercial activities, the legalization of land tenure are factors that must be incorporated and taken into account in our tireless march to the second Agrarian Reform.
This is how those Policies designed for agriculture should be: aggressively encouraging those who enter as agribusinesses, who sponsor security in investments on land, who give security to banks so that they receive as mortgage guarantee, pledge or as a security not only the title of proprietary right over land, also agricultural products and with added value. The State has the obligation not to let us enter the new millennium with forgotten agriculture, organizing for this purpose the incorporation of private capital, including international ones with the obvious constitutional exceptions, in favor of the land;that new criteria and guidelines are managed so that those lands declared TCO (community lands of origin) are inserted into the dynamics of production with skills indicated by those concepts of new manager and senior agricultural management, respecting beliefs and cultures but with the help of techno-cybernetics.
Because the Indians and indigenous communities with the passage of time and generations will not stop being indigenous but they will have to get on the bandwagon of the rhythm of production that will push them to be competitive and entrepreneurs.
Those Policies necessary for the land with which Bolivia may be inserted into international integration markets must contemplate legal aspects of formalization / legalization of land tenure: respecting, for example, the principle of jurisdictional uniqueness, strengthening for that purpose the new agrarian courts, such as courts of first instance; creating the agrarian affairs chamber within the superior district courts and having as a final instance the Agrarian Court today in office in Sucre through contentious proceedings. Nor can it be, via administrative reviews of agrarian social processes and executive titles, to reverse the land for non-payment of taxes.The payment of the land tax should be a preventive measure of efficient use, not demonization, and a method for running capital and workers.
The search for criteria that reconcile macroeconomic precepts with microeconomic interests will be fundamental to connect the country to the aforementioned globalization. Norms against dumping, ten-year production strategies, insertion of capital for soil research, financing of consultancies for ordering / classification of lands that are suitable for cultivation, pasture, agribusiness, agribusiness and the permanent regrouping and redistribution of land taking into account production parameters, social and legal criteria must be permanent objectives of the State, which, receiving advice from social entities such as the Eastern Agricultural Chamber, the Confederation of Cattlemen, agricultural investors, peasants and native peoples, place Bolivia in a situation of international competitiveness,previously having strengthened domestic agricultural markets.
Here the sectional municipalities will carry out a fundamental task: to articulate the rural with the urban, to combine two worlds in harmony until today with their backs turned. It is not possible that there are “central hub” cities and rural populations without potable water service. The municipality, as an autonomous entity, will not only direct plans to strengthen peasant markets, it will be the engine for the consolidation of investments in the land and, in coordination with INRA, it will ensure that all the land reclamation and formalization processes are promptly verified.
With these bases for the formation of State Policies, it will be possible to push Bolivian society towards those thresholds of the next century, following international postulates that point to land resources as the most powerful weapon / instrument in the fight against poverty, the beginning of all evils. and scourges that modern civilizations endure day by day due to the lack of food. If in the last century mining was the mainstay of national development, in the 21st century it corresponds to agriculture, generating wealth and dignity for all Bolivians from the green tropics and the East.
This change in structure, thought and current will also serve to forge a Bolivian agrarian law in the country, with its own nuances and brilliance, in permanent evolution / revolution according to the trampled evolution imposed by the daily stamp of history that raises an undeniable truth: empowering agriculture is fighting poverty and underdevelopment.
(1) Luís Antezana E. The INRA law, (2) FAO Food Security Information Executive Folder.
