RT Journal Article
T1 Soils, scale, or elites? Biological innovation in Uruguayan cattle farming, 1880-1913
A1 Travieso Barrios, Emiliano
AB This article examines the economics of innovation in livestock rearing during the first globalisation in Uruguay, the country with the most cattle per person in the world, both 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 hybridisation 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) or 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.
PB Wiley
SN 0013-0117
YR 2023
FD 2023-05-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/38444
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/38444
LA eng
NO I benefitted from discussions at the universities of Barcelona, Cambridge, Carlos III de Madrid, Stellenbosch, and Universidad de la República (Uruguay). I am grateful to my PhD supervisor at Cambridge, Gareth Austin, and to the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Special thanks are also due to colleagues who commented separately: Nicolás Bonino-Gayoso, Pablo Castro Scavone, Ewout Frankema, Alfonso Herranz-Loncán, Juan Infante-Amate, Dácil Juif, María Inés Moraes, Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Antonio Tena-Junguito, and Henry Willebald. William Travieso provided key advice on sources. I am thankful to editor Giovanni Federico and two anonymous referees from the Review, whose suggestions and criticisms were extraordinarily detailed and immensely improved this article. Research funding from the Cambridge International Trust, the Ellen McArthur Fund, and King's College, Cambridge is gratefully acknowledged. All translations are mine, as are all mistakes
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RD 1 sept. 2024