Politics of Agricultural Co-Operativism

Book excerpt: This book is a detailed analysis of the evolution of state-sponsored agricultural co-operativism in Peru, an Andean country with high levels of land concentration and widespread rural poverty. Most Peruvian agricultural co-operatives were organized during the military populist government of Velasco Alvarado which, after radical land reform, transformed expropriated estates into co-operatives. From the start, these projects became subject to multiple pressures that ranged from unfavourable government economic policies -- designed to promote import-substitution industrialization at the expense of the agricultural sector -- to the growth of the co-operative bureaucracy and the deterioration of labour discipline.