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Notas
| Description of the project: This article examines the economics of innovation in livestock rearing during the First Globalization in Uruguay, the country with the most cattle per person in the world then and now. Using a new historical dataset of Uruguayan agriculture, the first one at a sub-provincial level, I exploit regional differences in the adoption of cattle crossbreeding—the genetic improvement of local herds through hybridization with foreign breeds. Contrary to traditional historiographical claims, I find that this innovation was not primarily explained by the location of enlightened elites (European or local) nor by the scale of productive units (i.e., latifundia); rather, rural producers invested in crossbreeding wherever their local landscapes and previous productive choices encouraged it. While it affected biological processes that spanned several agricultural calendars, and thereby developed more slowly than innovations in crop farming, technical change in Uruguayan ranching was also environmentally sensitive, largely scale-neutral, congruent with previous agricultural patterns, and hinged on a widespread response from producers.
Methodology: Data on land, livestock, and crops which form the basis of the dataset were transcribed from the 1908 agricultural census. Data on elite ranches were taken from Pur-Sang, a well-known trade publication. Environmental data were taken from statistical yearbooks and government reports. GIS mapping was used to link the different data together and to calculate relevant distances. When data were not reported at the spatial level of court districts, simple methods were used to allocate values to districts. For soils, the predominant edaphological category in the district (in terms of total land cover) was allocated to it; for rainfall, each district was allocated the yearly rainfall value reported at the meteorological station closest to its centroid; for annual temperatures, the isothermal lines reported in the sources were mapped on top of the district map and the predominant value in each district was allocated to it. Historical district boundaries from 1908 were drawn through a lengthy process of cross-checking sources. The procedure was to work backwards from the 1963 census districts, which have been georeferenced by Uruguay’s National Statistical Institute (INE) and reflected court districts at the time, and ‘undo’ the boundary changes between 1908 and 1963, which had resulted in the creation of 24 new court districts and the redrawing of some boundaries. Provincial historical maps, available in Uruguayan archives, governmental decrees defining district boundaries, and Orestes Araújo’s Diccionario geográfico del Uruguay (1900) were used to this effect.
Research funding from the Cambridge International Trust, the Ellen McArthur Fund, and King’s College Cambridge is gratefully acknowledged.
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