Caviar to the general… and other agricultural news

While agriculture is a huge part of the Latin American in general, and Mexican in specific, economy, we almost never read anything about agriculture except when it relates to narcotics.

A couple of agriculture and international policy issues that may have been missed in the internet chatter:

With depletion of sturgeon stocks in the Caspian sea, and the price of caviar at 3500 USD per kilo wholesale, where are the Russians and Iranians going to get their fix of luxury products in the future?

A Russian firm is looking at Argentina:

Esturiones & Caviar SA signed a 15-year concession contract with the government of La Rioja whereby it will operate the fish farming plant in the town of Anillaco, where it will raise sturgeon for their precious eggs – caviar – and create 25 local jobs.

With sturgeon eggs selling  for a heck of a lot more than marijuana, or even unrefined refined coca leaves… sturgeon farming seem like an ideal alternative crop for replacing the income that Latin American farmers would lose if they .  However, sturgeon require a relatively temperate climate (which eliminates the coca-growing regions of the lower Andean slopes) and recirculating water — water being something in short supply in Mexico.  HOWEVER, in Sierra Madres on the Sinaloa/Durango border, (where marijuana and opium poppies are a highly lucrative crop), there is an ideal climate and there is a massive hydroelectic dam project in process… which means recirculating water.

Alas, setting up a fish farm requires a massive economic investment and it is several years before the sturgeon start producing eggs (although farm raised sturgeon is also sold as food itself).  But, seeing we have local entrepreneurs with experience in local agriculture and foreign marketing of luxury items.  One of them is on the Forbes list of filthy-rich people, too.

Speaking of alternative crops, it’s not just the Russians who are looking at investing in Latin America.  The United States Department of Agriculture is looking at working with the Mexican government on several projects, dealing with sustainable agriculture.

… several specific production projects will be introduced, including projects promoting rainwater recycling and the use of biological fertilizer and improved seeds.

I’m dubious about the “improved” seed part of that.  It could mean just making Mexican farmers more dependent than ever on U.S. corporate agriculture firms like Monsanto, so this may be worth keeping an eye on.

Also worth keeping an eye on have been developments (or lack thereof) in Honduras.  Hilary Clinton and the International Monetary Fund are claiming things are “back to normal”, which means… abnormal land development and the “normal” exploitation and misuse of the land that is at the root of political instability and… ultimately, the need to go into the narcotics industry to survive in rural Latin America.  And… for Hermano Juancito something far worse:  a sin.

The town has about 90 families, but only about 20 own enough land for coffee growing. About 80% of the land in their area is owned by a few large coffee plantations and by cattle ranchers who use the land for grazing.

Since many people in the village have little land – one person with less than .4 acres), the group asked them about buying the land.

First of all the land would cost about 80,000 lempiras (about $4234) per manzana (1.68 acres.) That’s about $2574 per acre. I just checked Iowa farm land prices; in 2009 the average value per acre was $4371.

The prices are thus very high – especially for people who for the most part make less than $1200 a year – the average for that area.

But that’s only part of the story. Much of the land is owned by cattle ranchers who use it and they won’t sell to campesinos, the people who work on the land. They will sell to other cattle ranchers but unlikely to sell to the poor, even at these high prices.

…

As I thought this over I cam back to thinking about my previous post and decided that I needed to do a careful study of Catholic Social Teaching on land reform especially the 1997 statement of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, “Towards a Better Distribution of Land: The Challenge of Agrarian Reform.”

…

The social teaching of the Church is very clear on this point, stating that agrarian reform is one of the most urgent reforms and cannot be delayed: “In many situations radical and urgent changes are therefore needed in order to restore to agriculture — and to rural people — their just value as the basis for a healthy economy, within the social community’s development as a whole.”