Received: 5 March 2016 Revised: 12 December 2016 Accepted: 15 December 2016

DOI: 10.1111/joac.12213

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Frente Amplio and agrarian policy in Uruguay

Diego E. Pieiro | Joaqun Cardeillac

Departamento de Sociologa de la Facultad de

Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la Republica,
Ncleo de Estudios Sociales Agrarios (NESA),
Constituyente, 1502, Montevideo, Uruguay
Correspondence
Diego E. Pieiro, Profesor Titular del
Departamento de Sociologa de la Facultad de
Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la Republica,
Ncleo de Estudios Sociales Agrarios (NESA),
Constituyente 1502, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Email: diego.pineiro@cienciassociales.edu.uy
Abstract
In this paper, we propose three lines of interpretation to understand
the actions of the Frente Amplio (FA) in Uruguay, which after more
than 10 years in power has not transformed the uneven agrarian
structure that it inherited. We suggest that in order to gain access
to power, the FA opted to move to the centre of the political
spectrum and implement agrarian policies in which agribusiness
and family farming coexist. Another possible interpretation to
understanding the absence of a policy more focused on supporting
family farming, and on limiting the expansion of the financial capital
and transnational corporations, is to see it as resulting from the
internal tensions within the coalition. However, the FA, in accor-
dance with its own history, did carry out a policy of protection
and promotion of labour and civil rights of rural wage workers.

KEYWORDS

agrarian policy, agribusiness, family farming, global commodity chains

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Frente Amplio (FA) attained power at the national level after two decades of
neoliberal governments. The FA had been founded in 1971 and consisted of a coalition of about 20 leftwing political
parties and groups. In the following 10 years, it reintroduced a regulatory role for the state in the economy, it carried
out tax reforms, it deepened the agenda for thirdgeneration rights in the health sector, and it drastically reduced
poverty and unemployment levels, while the economy recovered.
Despite all this, it appears that it is in respect to agrarian policies that the state intervened the least. There were
important changes, but instead of resulting from FA policies, they derived, rather, from the new norms and regulations
implemented during the neoliberal period, the growing demand for food and fibre internationally, and the penetration
of financial capital. This lead to an increase of land concentration and foreignization, the development of commodity
chains involving transnational capital, the decrease of family farming, and the lasting predominance of wage labour.
How did this happen? How can one understand that a leftist and progressive government did not address the
need for an agrarian reform policy, or at least the need to transform the agrarian structure in favour of the weakest
of rural actors?
In this paper, we propose three lines of interpretation. The first one is that during the 30 years that led to the
political ascension of the FA to national government, its political platform had to be watered down to attract voters

J Agrar Change. 2017;17:365380. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joac 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 365
366 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

from the centre of the political spectrum. This led the FA to abandon its antiimperialist, antioligarchic, and pro
agrarian reform positions. Therefore, in the past 10 years the FA has carried out the agrarian policy it had promised
to carry out, which consisted of ensuring the coexistence of agribusiness with family farming and the protection of
wage labour, without modifying the agrarian structure.
The second line of interpretation mirrors the one suggested by the English historian Henry Finch (1980) for the
government of President Jos Batlle y Ordez during the early 20th century. Finch argued that reforms and the
expansion of citizen rights were possible due to an implicit pact made with landowners. Reforms were to be accepted
as long as the agrarian structure remained unchanged, while the resources raised from the export of agricultural goods
would fund the reforms (Finch, 1980). One hundred years later, the same interpretation can be applied to assess the
relation of the FA (and its agrarian and agricultural policy) with the landowning classes and foreign capital that have
been investing in agribusiness. Concurrently, and despite the fact that the actors have changed, the agrarian structure
at the beginning of the 21st century is very similar to that reported in the first agricultural census of 1908.
The third line of interpretation has to do with the political composition of the FA, and in particular with competing
visions that coexist within the coalition about what should be a frenteamplista agrarian policy.
The paper is divided into three main sections, among which the last one presents the conclusions. In the first
section, we present a brief economic, social, and political history of 20thcentury Uruguayan agriculture. We offer a
descriptive, empirically based analysis of changes in the agrarian structure and a description of the social classes of
Uruguayan agriculture and its relations with the government of the FA in the first 15 years of the 21st century.
The second section aims at understanding the different lines of interpretation to assess the performance of the
FA while in power, in relation to the changes that have occurred in the agrarian and social structures observed during
the first 15 years of the 21st century. To do this, we will look at the changes in the agrarian social structure by
focusing on the implications of these changes on the relations between different classes and actors with political
power. Then, we will focus on two characteristics of the FA that attained government, to explore how they explain
the observed results in terms of inequality and concentration of land. The first characteristic was the perception by
the main political actors of the need to temper their political proposals in order to gain more voters. The second
was the coexistence of competing visions of agrarian policy within the FA. Finally, we end with an analysis of the main
political organization representing family farming in Uruguay.

2 | T H E ST A T E , A G R A R I A N P O L I TI C S , A N D SO C I E T Y I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y
URUGUAY

2.1 | The Uruguayan state and its political parties during the 20th century
Uruguay has always been a cattleranching country. The extensive plains and the temperate climate facilitated this
activity, which would mark out the economic and social history of the country. The land, which was of little value,
was assigned by the Spanish Crown in the form of large land extensions, giving rise to the agrarian structure of the
latifundio. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, European immigrants settled on the land as family farmers.
At the end of the 19th century, after decades of civil war, the state sought to bring together the different political
actors through various agreements based on the articulation of consensus and negotiation of power. This contributed
to the pacification process and culminated with the governments of Jos Batlle y Ordez in the early years of the
20th century.
As a result of the installation of meat processing plants and an increased demand for livestock products due to the
First World War, cattle raising expanded in the early 20th century, until it quickly reached its limits (Bertino, Bertoni,
Tajam, & Yaff, 2001). Despite the fact that livestock products represented an average of 80% of Uruguayan exports
from 1870 to 1970, their share in the national economy was rapidly decreasing: 55% of GDP in 1900, 33% in 1930,
and 17% in 1955 (lvarez, 2014).
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 367

The distribution of land did not differ significantly from that of other Latin American countries. It remained deeply
unequal. On the one hand, a stratum of large producers held the largest proportion of land and the political power it
conferred. On the other hand, a stratum of numerous family farmers had access to a small proportion of the land. To
this latter category, we should add a social class that has its social origins in the gauchos and consisted of waged
labourers or unqualified rural workers known as peones.
The state played a fundamental role as guarantor of private property rights, and private landowners were the first
to benefit from investments in the agricultural sector (Pieiro & Moraes, 2008). This marginal participation of the state
changed during Batllismo (19031933) and led to the ratification of the Law of Colonization of 1948. This norm
emphasized the social function of land, alongside its productive and commercial functions.
The end of this period was trigged by the exhaustion of the import substitution industrialization (ISI) model, which
left the country in a poor economic shape, facing protests and social unrest that, due to a discredited political system
incapable of channelling social discontent, led to military dictatorship. The neoliberal civicmilitary government
(19731984) was responsible for the deindustrialization, the dismantling of social protection policies, a decrease in
investment, privatization, reduction of the salaries of publicsector workers and of pensions, the prohibition of unions
and the reversal of workers' rights, the condemnation and prohibition of all partisan political activity, and so on. The
agricultural policies of that period mainly emphasized extensive livestock production/cattle ranching and largescale
farming. As for the provision of goods and services, the policies became a source of inequality: the poor satisfied their
needs through the public system, while the rich bought them on the private market.
Postdictatorship governments (three from the Colorado Party and one from the National Party) had to deal with a
country coping with a crumbling economy fragmented by poverty and a large public sector, amongst other things.
Despite these, they continued to implement the neoliberal policies that prevailed in Western capitalist societies.
The FA, a coalition of leftwing parties that had obtained 18% of the national votes in 1971, was created shortly
before the coup. It gradually increased its electoral flow in postdictatorship elections until it won, for the first time,
the municipal election in Montevideo in 1989, where half the population of the country resided. The brutal crisis that
affected Argentina and Brazil also shook Uruguay in 2002 and 2003. This crisis shook the legitimacy of the traditional
parties that had been alternating in office and gave an additional electoral impulse to the leftist coalition. The FA won
the national elections at the end of 2004 with 52% of the votes and retained the majority of votes in the following
two elections of 2009 and 2014, initiating a 15year period (20052020) of progressive government.
Some scholars (Lorenzoni & Prez, 2013; Moreira, Selios, & Lizbona, 2009) have argued that the Uruguayan
electorate dislikes abrupt changes and radical reforms. This has also been the preferred approach adopted by the
FA in the implementation of its reforms: [...] the leftwing frentista went from a programme inspired by the
dependency school, and its antiimperialist and antioligarchic position, whose central postulates were an agrarian
reform, the nonpayment of the debt, the nationalization of foreign trade and banking, to a programme defined as
progressive [....] (Moreira et al., 2009, p. 34).1
In respect to the agrarian question, the 1971 FA programme included the proposal for an agrarian reform. In
1989, this only referred to the redistribution of land. In the 2014 programme, and despite the fact that in the previous
decade the country had undergone the strongest concentration and foreignization of land in its history,2 the
proposal was that land policy should be linked to the (meagre) resources of the Instituto Nacional de Colonizacin
(National Institute of Colonization, INC).3

1
Our translation.
2
This will be further discussed in this paper.
3
The policy tool set by the INC is provided for in Article 35 of Law 11.029 and is entitled Derecho de preferencia respecto de los
particulares (Preference rights of individuals). This provision obliges any potential seller of land to first offer it to the INC, which will
have preference over any potential buyer. Beyond the restrictions provided by the norm, this mechanism represents a major limitation,
especially in the context of rising land prices.
368 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

2.1.1 | The return of the state and the social and economic recovery in the Frente Amplio
governments
The presence of the FA in government meant a return to a statecentred approach to ensure the economic and social
development of the country. Between 2004 and 2014, the national GDP grew at an average annual rate of 5.4%, the
secondhighest growth rate in Latin America. Inequality rates, as measured by the Gini index, went from 0.46 to 0.38,
registering the best score on the subcontinent. Foreign direct investment (FDI) represented 5.6% of the national GDP,
the secondhighest proportion in Latin America. According to the latest data available, in 2013 27% of FDI went to the
manufacturing sector. In this sector, an investment of US$2.1 million (2012) stood out, the most important investment
in the history of Uruguay. It was linked to the forestry expansion of the cellulose plant in the forest plantations of
Montes del Plata (Arauco and Stora Enso).4 The second most important sector was construction, which retained
22% of FDI. This mostly came from Argentine investors with assets in Montevideo or Punta del Este. The other
two sectors with the largest proportion of FDI (approximately 12%) were commerce and services, and the agricultural
sector (Uruguay XXI, 2015).
Exports, which were always linked to the primary sector, reached the highest level in the history of the country in
2014, at US$10.056 million. The main products that were being exported were soybeans (16%), beef (15%), dairy
products (8%), cellulose (7%), rice (5%), beverage concentrate (5%), motor vehicles and auto parts (5%), leather goods
(3%), wheat (3%), and wood (3%) (Uruguay XXI, 2014).
This economic performance allowed for public social spending to increase by 83% between 2005 and
2012. While GDP grew by 46.6%, public spending increased by 52.2% (Olesker, 2014). The consequences of this
redistribution can be seen in the variation of the poverty rate during the same period: it dropped from 29.9% in
2004 to 6.8% in 2015 (INE, 2016).
If the aim of the first progressive government was to ensure the economic recovery of the country, for the second
government it consisted of the expansion of rights and the promotion of nondiscriminatory practices on the basis of
gender, race, and sexual orientation; the guarantee of sexual and reproductive rights; the recognition of samesex
marriage; the promotion of food sovereignty; the right to happiness; the protection of environmental rights; access
to culture; and so on. Needless to say, the legal recognition of these rights did not necessarily mean that the state,
or society, applied them fully in their daily operations.

2.2 | The agrarian and social structure of the Uruguayan countryside

2.2.1 | The agrarian structure
In order to analyse the changes that occurred in the agrarian structure, it is necessary to understand the distribution of
productive land. Table 1 shows how the number of farms doubled in the first half of the 20th century due to the
increase in small farms exploiting less than 100 hectares of land, as a consequence of policies of President Batlle. It
also shows a decrease in the number of small farms following the implementation of neoliberal policies by military
governments since the 1970s. Paradoxically, the land distribution in 2011 is almost the same as in 1908. It is also
worth noting that the number of mediumsize farms remained constant, while the number of large farms (over
1,000 hectares) grew throughout the century. Given that the agricultural area was constant throughout the century
(publicly owned land had been distributed throughout the 19th century) it can be said that the growth of large farms
in the first decade of the 21st century occurred at the expense of small and mediumsize farms.
During the last third of the 20th century, there was a sustained trend towards the integration of the agricultural
sector and the raw material processing industry; either vertically through networktype links or through simple market
mechanisms to form chains of agroindustrial complexes (Sturgeon, 2008). The agroindustries that grew the most

4
Other items that stood out were: the Elaboration of Food Products and Beverages (US$111 million); the Manufacturing of Chemical
Products (US$61 million); and the Manufacturing of Machinery and Electrical Appliances (US$48 million) (Uruguay XXI, 2015).
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 369

TABLE 1 UruguayFarms by size for selective years

Census years
2000 2011 20112000
1908 1961 1980
Farms Number Number Number Number % Number % Number %

1,000 hectares 3,781 3,809 3,895 4,034 7.06 4,138 9.21 +104 +2.57
and over
100 to 999 15,375 18,085 17,532 17,052 29.84 15,821 35.24 1771 10.38
hectares
1 to 99 24,433 65,034 46,935 36,045 63.09 24,931 55.53 11.114 30.83
hectares
Total 43,874 86,928 68,362 57,131 100 44,890 100 12.241 21.42

Sources: For data from 1908 to 1980, see Finch (1980). For data for the following years, see the respective Censos Generales
Agropecuarios.

were those that produced products for export: meat processing plants, textiles, rice mills, breweries, and processing
and packing plants for dairy, poultry, and citrus.

2.2.2 | Social classes in rural Uruguay

According to Pieiro and Moraes (2008), the countryside was organized around the same three basic classes at the
beginning and at the end of the 20th century. Although authors have referred to them differently (Errandonea,
1989; Solari, 1958), the most accepted categories are rural entrepreneurs, family farmers, and rural workers. In turn,
each of these categories can be divided into subgroups.
Rural entrepreneurs (or capitalist producers) own land that is worked by waged labourers and production is ori-
ented at export. Within this category, we can identify two distinguishable subtypes: the estanciero (or rancher) and
the agriculturallivestock entrepreneur. The former is a person whose main productive activity is cattle raising. He
relies on the extensive use of natural resources, registers low productivity rates, does not require technological
improvement, and his monetary revenue depends mostly on the fact that he owns a large amount of land, from which
he can extract a rent for its agricultural income. The latter subtype refers to an entrepreneur, who became dominant
over the last four decades of the 20th century, and who aims at producing complementary products alongside
livestock production (i.e. meat, wool, or milk), as well as rice, cereals, oilseeds, citrus, and, more recently, timber.
Therefore, the agriculturallivestock entrepreneur invests in technological packages for cultivation, irrigation, and soil
improvement, and uses advanced machinery. This allows him to attain higher levels of productivity. His profits depend
on technological innovation as well as wagelabour productivity (absolute and differential land rent, as well as surplus
value). This social class is linked to the development of agroindustrial complexes.
There are no peasants in Uruguay. Rather, there are family farmers with small extensions of land. According to the
2011 General Agricultural Census, family farmers owned an average of 100 hectares, although half of them have
claimed to own less than 57 hectares. The land is farmed mainly by family labour.5 They are fully integrated into
the markets for land, labour, capital, products, and inputs. Their situation in the class structure is that of real subsump-
tion to capital. In 2000, they represented 80% of producers and controlled 30% of the land, while in 2011 they
represented only 66% and controlled 27% of the land. Among family farmers, 61% is dedicated to the production
of cattle, 7.7% produces vegetables, 7.7% raises milk cows, and 7.9% is dedicated to sheep raising. The other 3.8%

5
The official definition stipulates that a family producer is one who employs up to two waged workers; he or she must reside on the
farm or at a distance that is no further than 50 kilometres. The family producer must operate a farm of up to 500 hectares and the
farm will be its main source of income. The definition we use here is a little different, since it is based on the type of labour that is
involved. In other words, we will consider as a family producer every farm in which 50%, or more, of the labour force is made up of
family members or unpaid labourers.
370 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

grows cereals and oilseeds (other than rice), 2% is involved in pig production, and, finally, 1.5% is dedicated to poultry
production.6 Most of their production is destined for the domestic market.
There are several subcategories within the family farmers (Pieiro, 1994): from the capitalized family producer to
the poor farmer. The former invests in machinery, plantations (e.g. fruit trees), pastures, and fencing, and obtains
reasonable annual profits to reinvest in his farm. The latter has little land or capital and often needs to work
outside his farm for part of the year in order to improve his income. These are also known as pluriactivos (Pieiro &
Cardeillac, 2009).
The third social class is made of rural waged workers. According to the 1985 demographic census, there were
94,667 rural workers. By the year 2000, that number had decreased significantly to 69,649, and again by 2011 to
69,284 (Cardeillac & Nathan, 2015). In 2000, the proportion of wage earners represented 56% of the total rural labour
force, outnumbering family workers. So far, the trends between these two groups have been quite different during the
21st century. On the one hand, there has been a significant decline in family workers (i.e. unpaid family labour
employed by different types of family farmers), while, on the other, there has been an initial decline followed by
stabilization in the number of wage workers. These trends have resulted in an extension and deepening of capitalist
relations of production in the countryside. Thus by 2011, 65% of the total workforce consisted of wage labourers.
The category of rural waged workers can be subdivided into various social typologies. According to the type of
work done, it is important to distinguish the permanent pen of the cattle ranches, working mostly in horseback, from
the more qualified labourer working in agriculture. It is also convenient to distinguish a more skilled worker with
managerial and supervision tasks that are realized within agricultural farms. This category includes managers,
administrators, supervisors, foremen, and so on, among which there can be professionals.
The technological changes that have occurred throughout the 20th century have led employers to hire very few
qualified permanent workers. Instead, they have resorted to employing unskilled labourers whenever production
demands intensify. These unskilled labourers often work under precarious conditions, are forced to work without a
contract, and the employment of female workers has increased in tasks such as forestry plantation and fruit harvesting
(Pieiro, 2008).

2.3 | Changes in agriculture at the beginning of the 21st century

2.3.1 | Economic, social, institutional, and technological changes
The agricultural sector played an important role in the economic recovery that followed the crisis of 2002. There are
a number of reasons that help to explain this. On the one hand, there are external factors that created new
opportunities for investors, attracted by land and food production in times of financial crisis in the developed world
for example: the rising prices for food and fibre on the international markets; the increase in oil prices, which has
encouraged the production of biofuels; the exhaustion of the boreal forests, which has triggered the transfer of
forestcellulosic companies to the Southern Hemisphere; and the new conditions structuring the expansion of
global capital.
On the other hand, internal factors also influenced the economic recovery, particularly those of an institutional
nature. During the 1990s, neoliberal governments modified four laws that promoted land investment. The first was
the Afforestation Promotion Law (1987), which granted tax exemptions and subsidized the creation of forestry
plantation. Within 20 years, the extension of forested land had increased from 50,000 to 1 million hectares. The
second was the modification of the Leasing Law that deregulated contracts in order to encourage shortterm leases,
which would later be used by soybean investors. The third institutional innovation was the lifting of the restriction
that only allowed the purchase of land by private companies when these were constituted by registered shares. This
modification facilitated the purchase of land by financial capital that was frequently foreign. Finally, the Investment

6
The information presented here was obtained from our own revision of the General Agricultural Censuses databases of
2000 and 2011.
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 371

and Promotion Law 16,906 of 2006 favoured foreign investments of all kinds, lifting legal obstacles in the agro
industrial sector, among others.
Other factors that should be taken into account are those of a technological nature. Among the main ones are:
transgenic seeds, which allowed the implementation of notilling packages and cost reductions; new machinery, which
allowed the reduction of wages and the numbers of personnel in almost all of the commodity chains; the introduction
and expansion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agriculture and agribusiness; modification of
the organizational processes of the workforce; and so on. All of these factors were functional with regard to the
network type of organization and the economies of scale that characterize the new agribusiness linked to financial
capital (Carmbula, 2015).
The expansion that is taking place in the three large global commodity chains (GCC) operating in the country
explains much of the change that occurred in the early 2000s. The forestcellulosic chain, favoured by the
aforementioned laws and the low price of land, as well as the granting of free trade zones, grew by developing a model
of vertical integration linked to the construction of two large pulp production plants in Uruguay (Lagaxio, 2013).
In the case of the global commodity chain of cereal grains, Uruguay has historically produced wheat and, to a
lesser extent, maize, sunflower, barley, and sorghum, in combination with its livestock production. Since the beginning
of the first decade of the present century, soybean production has increased from 30,000 hectares in 2001/2002 to
1.3 million hectares in 2014, representing 72% of the area under cultivation. Wheat production has come in second
place, while the production of other crops has fallen or stagnated. The expansion of soybean production was carried
out with a new technological package (transgenic, glyphosate, no tilling, etc.) and a new organizational model that
included separation between the administration and ownership of the land, agricultural subcontractors, agricultural
futures, financial capital, and so on. This expansion process led to an increase in agricultural concentration indexes
and was accompanied by the displacement of small and medium producers, who could not compete under the new
agricultural business conditions and had to abandon farming (Figueredo & Menndez, 2013).
This new context also saw the arrival of new actors, who brought in different productive logics and strategies that
contrasted with those of traditional producers (Errea, Peyrou, Secco, & Souto, 2011). Large companies arrived in
Uruguay, many from Argentina, bringing their own production technology and network organization
(Santos, Oyantcabal, & Narbondo, 2013). This technology was later adopted by Uruguayan entrepreneurs who, in
some cases, later replaced the Argentinean investors.
This new context generated a vertiginous dynamism in the export sector of soybeans and other crops. The
concentration observed in the agricultural phase of the chain is also seen in the commercialization of production,
where 86% of the value of soybean exports is controlled by 10 companies (Uruguay XXI, 2011).
The third global commodity chain that was transformed was that of meat production. Although the concentration
processes were slower and less noticeable, their centrality in Uruguayan agriculture gives them greater importance.
This chain, which historically was based on the productivity of the natural plains, includes farms of various sizes
and various types of producers. As a consequence, cattle producers have lost 2 million hectares at the hands of the
two abovementioned chains in the past decade. The increased productivity of land has therefore mainly been
obtained by technological improvements, with the introduction, for example, of feeding supplements for fattening
cattle. On the other hand, there has also been a process of concentration and foreignization in the industrial phase.
Of the top 10 industrial plants that account for 77% of production, only three are national, while six are controlled
by Brazilian capital7 and one by Argentinean capital (Bittencourt, Carracelas, & Reig, 2011; Figueredo & Carmbula,
2014; Flores, 2013).
Agricultural and agroindustrial exports remain central to the country's economy and its trade balance. It accounts
for 76% of total exports and its annual growth rate of exports has been 7% (CINVE, 2015).

7
It is worth remembering that two worldwide leading meat processor companies, Marfrig and JBS, are Brazilian. The latter alone is
responsible for more than 10% of the world's meat production (Flores, 2013).
372 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

This growth has partly been due to the Foreign Direct Investment Promotion (FDI) Law enacted during the first
FA government. The fixed investment rate of the economy, which averaged 14% of GDP between 1988 and 2004,
reached 23% of GDP in 2013. The projects approved between 2008 and 2014 that directed their investment to
the agroindustrial sector accounted for 30% of the total promoted investment (Duran & Salgado, 2014).

2.3.2 | The process of land concentration and foreignization

The average price of land in Uruguay was around US$500 per hectare during the 1990s. Since 2002, and for the
reasons mentioned above as well as in other works (e.g. Pieiro, 2012), the price started to increase due to the
combined demand by large forestry companies and agricultural entrepreneurs for the production of grains, particularly
soybeans. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the average value had multiplied by six, reaching an
average of US$3,519 per hectare in 2013 (DIEA, 2014).
In the early years of the 21st century, there has been an unprecedented process of landownership concentration,
as explained above (see Table 1). More concretely, between 2000 and 2012, land acquisitions totalled 7 million
hectares, representing 44% of the agricultural areas of Uruguay.
The censuses also suggest that this was accompanied by a process of foreignization. In the 2000 census, 90% of
the land was owned by Uruguayans. Eleven years later, that figure had dropped to 54%. The land lost by Uruguayans
was purchased by private corporations, the nationality of which was not made public.
In summary, the expansion of the grains and forestrycellulosic commodity chains happened through the
conversion of cattle and agricultural land, made possible by the introduction of new technologies and production
practices. In some cases, livestock entrepreneurs turned to agriculture production. In other cases, traditional
entrepreneurs heavily indebted by the financial crisis and the devaluation of 2002 took the opportunity to pay off
their debts by selling part, or all, of their land.
It is possible to conclude that the economic policy in general and the agrarian policy in particular under the FA
governments took on two roles: one aimed at stimulating the expansion of agribusiness, as well as investment by
means of national and foreign capital; and a second one that generated compensatory policies for family farmers
and rural wage workers.

2.4 | Policies and programmes supporting family farming during the FA governments
The buying frenzy and high cost of land led many family farmers to sell their properties. On the one hand, they were
seduced by offers made to them by investors, or they were forced to abandon farming because of increases in rental
fees. On the other, the expansion of the agribusiness sector led to an increasing demand for labour power, which
attracted family workers due to the higher wages. Finally, another important factor was that the conflict over the
use of surface water by large forest plantations and the use of agrochemicals by soybeans producers forced many
family farmers to sell their land.
Following the arrival of the FA in government in 2005, rural policies and projects geared at supporting family
farmers were further developed. In 2008, the Direccin General de Desarrollo Rural (General Office of Rural
Development, DGDR) was created within the Ministerio de Ganadera, Agricultura y Pesca (Ministry of Livestock
Agriculture and Fisheries, MGAP). Furthermore, a Registro de Productores Familiaresthe Family Producer Registry
was also created, allowing family farmers to register voluntarily. This facilitated the design of a series of targeted
policies and programmes in the following years.8 Therefore, between 2005 and 2011, 13,431 family farmers benefited
from support through programmes and projects cofunded by the state (DGDRMGAP, 2016) and international
organizations. Between 2011 and 2015, the DGDR extended the programmes aimed at family farmers by including
economic support for investment, training, technical assistance, and group strengthening, and to ensure the

8
In 2013, the Registry accounted for 21,645 registered farms of 78 hectares each, on average, representing an overall territory of
1,687,583 hectares (Sganga, Cabrera, & Gonzlez, 2013, p. 653).
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 373

promotion of women and young people in the sector. All these initiatives were implemented with three main
objectives: to design and implement targeted policies to improve rural development, to promote the equitable and
sustainable inclusion of family farming in the commodity chains, and finally to articulate and coordinate new state
social policies in the countryside (DGDRMGAP, 2016). By 2013, 8,844 actions had been taken to support family
farmers selected through the Registry.
Between 2004 and 2013, financial support programmes had distributed approximately US$31 million through
23,445 credits that benefited 10,122 people (Gmez, Martirena, Ponce de Len, & Ros, 2013). The microcredit
programme supported three areas or types of projects. The first consisted of supporting agricultural and non
agricultural productive activities up to a maximum amount of US$12,000 or US$30,000, depending on the year.
The second area consisted of a family support fund to cover an important range of needs: health problems, household
equipment, school materials, clothing, and so on. The maximum amount set for this kind of help varied from US$4,000
to US$10,000, depending on the year. The third area targeted family farmers who needed to finance house repair
projects for maintenance or extension work, with a maximum loan of US$12,000 or US$24,000, depending on
the year.9 Overall, microcredits did not exceed US$1,000 per producer.
As of 2005, the INC was politically and economically strengthened. Between 2005 and 2014, 90,000 hectares
were distributed, representing 15% of all the land distributed in the history of the institution. In accordance with
the political orientations of the FA, it was agreed that the land would remain the property of the state and rented
out to producers. In order to allow a greater number of people to benefit from this process, priority was given to
organized producers, to encourage cooperation between settlers. Currently, the INC owns about 590,000 hectares
of land on which production is taking place by more than 5,100 individual and collective settlers (representing about
20,000 people) (Juncal & Camacho, 2015). As can be seen from this data, although the colonization initiatives of the
INC are not to be underestimated, they have not been sufficient to curb the loss of family farmers that has occurred in
the past 15 years.

2.4.1 | Rural wage labourers and the compensatory policies of the progressive government
According to authors who have studied the situation of rural wage workers during the 20th century, their wages have
always been below those of their urban counterparts, and their working and living conditions have been deplorable
(Gonzlez Sierra, 1994; Rocha, 2008). On the cattle ranches, the wages of workers were low, the housing conditions
were poor, and the working day was from dawn to dusk, without any breaks. Moreover, employers had total control
over the lives of workers, which made any attempt at unionization impossible. The wages and the lives of the workers
who performed harvest tasks and lived in the small towns of the interior were even worse. There, one could find the
worst indicators of poverty and indigence, of unemployment and underemployment, of schooling and access to basic
housing services, healthcare, access to social security, and so on. The labour norms that defined the labour regime and
social rights in Uruguay very early on did not apply to rural workers in the same way, since it was understood that rural
work fell under exceptional conditions linked to biological cycles (Pieiro, 2008).
In 2005, under the new FA government, significant changes were made regarding the labour policies covering
rural workers. In that year, the Salary Councils, consisting of the official tripartite negotiation platform (between
workers, employers, and the state), were asked to open negotiations on wages and working conditions. The 2005
invitation included representatives of rural workers for the very first time. In the following years, other norms were
introduced: the duplication of the national minimum wage (including rural workers); the limitation of the working
day to 8 hours, and the regulation of breaks; safety and health norms specific to the agricultural sector; the adoption
of a Rural Worker's Day as a nonworking and paid holiday; the funding of public campaigns emphasizing the rights of
rural workers; the creation of the Unidad de Empleo Ruralor Rural Employment Unitwithin the Ministry of Labour
and Social Security (Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, MTSS), and so on. To these, we must add the introduction

9
The value of the dollar varied from 26 Uruguayan pesos in 2004 to just over 20 pesos in 2013.
374 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

of stricter supervision practices by the MTSS of the degree of compliance with the new labour regulations (Cardeillac,
Carmbula, et al., 2015).
In sum, the new wage increase, the collective bargaining, the formalization of labour contracts, and other
proactive actions helped to improve the wages, working conditions, and lives of agricultural workers.

3 | T H E D I F F I C U L T I E S F A C E D B Y T H E P R O G R E S S I V E G O V E R N M EN T I N
M O D I F Y I N G T H E A G R A R I A N S T R U C T U RE

3.1 | The agrarian social structure and political power

In a country that has been food selfsufficient and the economy of which was based on its ability to export primary
goods, the landowning classes have always held a lot of power and played a preponderant political role. As explained
above, the agricultural structure of the first census of 1908 is similar to that of 2011. In the numerous censuses
undertaken throughout the 20th century, the number of family farmers increased during the first half and decreased
in a similar proportion in the second half. We have already explained the reasons for these variations. The truth is that
the 4,000 or so large establishments of over 1,000 hectares persisted with little variation throughout the century.
The reasons for this trend have also been explained above. Most probably, a certain number of traditional large
landowning families, which is difficult to estimate, disappeared with the arrival of the new agrarian capital that
included translatina enterprises, investment and pension funds, and anonymous multinational companies. Despite
that, the traditional large landowning families that were able to make timely organizational and technological shifts
to convert themselves into modern businesses still exist.
Therefore, the structure of the power relations that emerged at the beginning of the 21st century was partially
different from the one that existed 100 years earlier, although it is too soon to know how the power relations will
realign. It could be suggested that the two most powerful organizations of landowners, the Rural Association of
Uruguay and the Rural Federation, will see their influence diminished as a result of the presence of important foreign
landowners who will not seek, or need, to ally with anyone locally in order to pressure the government. In fact, the
way in which the multinationals that control the pulp and paper sector have proceeded thus far, that is by negotiating
directly with the FA government, is an indication of what is to come.
The class position of the family farmers is contradictory. On the one hand, they own land and are integrated into
the markets. The upper strata hire labour, while the lower strata have had to sell their labour power. It is therefore not
surprising that they have tended to ally themselves with employer organizations when dealing with the claims of
waged workers. However, as expressed in its programme, according to the Comisin Nacional de Fomento Rural
(National Rural Development Commission, CNFR), the main trade union organization of the family farmers, the
principal tension in the field today lies between agribusiness and family farming.
Family farmers have maintained a symbiotic relationship with the state: the latter needs them not only to produce
food for the domestic market but also as a way of colonizing the territory (de Torres lvarez, Arbeletche, Sabourin,
Cardeillac, & Massardier, 2014), while producers need the state to support them when facing difficulties as a result
of the expansion of agribusiness. Since the state also relies on agribusiness to produce exportable products, it can only
support family farmers as long as they do not affect agribusiness and, more broadly, the agrarian structure dominated
by them. In these 10 years, the approach adopted by the state has therefore been twofold: it has maintained the
agrarian structure and facilitated the evolution of agribusiness with favourable macroeconomic policies; while
implementing micro public policies in support of family farmers through programmes and projects that seek to
increase their financial, technical, and organizational resources, as outlined above.
As explained above, waged workers currently represent the main labour force in the countryside, as a result of
their own numerical growth but also due to the decline of family farming. Despite this, they have had, and still have,
serious difficulties in organizing and enforcing their formal rights. Many factors help to explain this: their dispersion
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 375

over a vast territory; the repression exercised by employers over those who attempt to organize; the blacklisting of
militants; the territorial segmentation of employment markets by gender and age; and the cooptation of workers
through the ideology of the employers (Cardeillac, Gallo, & Juncal, 2015). In accordance with its own political
programme, the FA government has actively supported policies that seek to improve and protect the living conditions,
wages, and rights of waged workers through the actions of the MTSS. But the distance is so significant that it will take
many years, or much more vigorous policies, for this sector to acquire some political capacity of its own.
An analysis of agrarian social classes must include rentiers. In the absence of peasants, Uruguayan landowners
have had to lend their lands to other capitalist entrepreneurs or family farmers. Without denying its existence, it
should be noted that today the rentier is often a mediumsized producer who prefers not to exploit the land himself
for various reasons (e.g. lack of capital, lack of scale, lack of knowledge of organizational and productive technology,
risk aversion, etc.). Instead, he will lease it to larger capitalist enterprises that produce grains, meat, or dairy on a large
scale. The problem is that the absence of adequate data makes it impossible to estimate the importance of this new
actor in the Uruguayan countryside, even if several studies have shown its increasing presence (Arbeletche &
Gutirrez, 2010).
Nowadays, there are entrepreneurs who play different roles: as landowners, who have started to venture into
other aspects of the production chainfor example, in the collection of grains; by working for other entrepreneurs
with surplus capacity (e.g. machines and workers); or by leasing land for the expansion of cattle ranching, forestry,
and so on. In these cases, we have agrarian capitalist entrepreneurs who simultaneously occupy various positions in
the social structure, without departing from the classical categories of the agrarian structure.
Recent studies have begun to refer to a reconfiguration of the agrarian classes (Figueredo & Carmbula, 2014;
Pieiro & Menndez, 2014). Nowadays, it would be insufficient to carry out an analysis of the agrarian structure,
and the political assessment of the possible alliances between classes and social groups, by focusing solely on the
three most traditional social actors (i.e. entrepreneurs, family farmers, and salaried workers). A study based on the
actors that interact in the local or global commodity chain would, in fact, show a set of possible alliances that would
allow a better understanding of the political dynamics at play. The scheme of the agrarian social structure described
above must therefore be complemented by the role played by actors who intervene in both the previous and
later stages, and who have invigorated the markets of the main products of Uruguayan agriculture and led their
modernization. We will dedicate the following paragraphs to that discussion.
In the stage of the provision of inputs for agriculture, we can identify the following actors: the entrepreneurs of
the seed industry, those of the machinery and tools sector, the chemical industry, which produces fertilizers, and all
the companies that specialize in retailing. The seed companies have also expanded into the agricultural production
stage, by buying or leasing land, but are generally connected to traditional entrepreneurs through simple market links;
in other words, those governed by prices (Sturgeon, 2008). In the forestry commodity chain, which is characterized by
strong vertical integration, the tree nursery and initial planting stages are under the control of industrialforestry
companies; hence the link is based on the hierarchy (Sturgeon, 2008), since a transnational company from the
industrial phase will usually internalize the agricultural phase. At the same time, field forest plantations are outsourced
to labour subcontractors. Therefore, relational or even captive linkages are common at this stage (Sturgeon, 2008),
given the asymmetry of power and information among the actors (i.e. large transnational corporations and national
medium and small service companies).
In the postfarming stages, we can identify a multiplicity of actors and a combination of relations between actors
that will vary according to the sector. In the grain commodity chain, collection and commercialization for export is
made by multinational companies,10 but also by important local companies. In the latter case, companies often own
or lease the land on which they produce grains. But silos and trucks can either be rented out or can be the property

10
For example, in 2011 and 2012, Cargill, ADM, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge, Nidera, and Glencore accounted for 58% of the volume of the
wheat and 30% of the soybean exported. This shows that there is strong participation by large companies, without this implying that
the market is concentrated at the local level, where in fact the concentration of trade in grain exports has fallen (Souto, 2013).
376 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

of the commercialization company, or other companies that also make up the commodity chain. Some grains are
processed by important local industries, through which they are incorporated into the chain. This competitive dynamic
is favourable to the type of simple market link that articulates the commodity chain of grains and distinguishes it from
the others. In the meat, dairy, and forestcellulosic commodity chain, the entrepreneurs of the manufacturing
industries play an important role: they are the connection point of the chains and, as such, they control the whole
productive process through a variety of means, but generally through the determination of the prices upstream. In
doing so, they promote a type of link that is closer to the captive type, in the framework of commodity chains in
which there are concentration processes in the industrial stage that do not exist in the case of grains. The analysis
becomes even more complex if one takes into account the fact that most of these industries have been acquired
by foreign multinational companies in the past 10 years.11
Most of these actors play a relevant role in the distribution of rent and surplus value originating from the
agricultural stage proper, even if they do not participate directly in that phase of production. At the same time, while
there are always tensions over the distribution of income at the different stages or links of the chains, the recent
period of high prices for products allowed extraordinary gains to be made by all actors. As a result, there have not
been any significant distributive struggles among them.

3.1.1 | The internal power relations within the FA and the agrarian policy
Beyond their implicit or stated intentions, the FA governments (20052014) did not have the political capacity to alter
the outcomes of the agrarian policy. This can be understood from at least two perspectives: first, as a consequence of
the shift towards the centre; and, second, as the result of three political tendencies that can be identified within
the FA.
The FA defines itself as a movement and as a political coalition with 40 years of history. It brings together about
20 leftwing parties, of which only about seven have parliamentary representation. In our view, three distinctive
political positions coexist within the coalition on what its agrarian and agricultural policies should be. The first is
formed by two ideological parties: the Partido Comunista (Communist Party, PC) and the Partido Socialist (Socialist
Party, PS). Both have deep urban and industrial roots, and as such do not sympathize with family farmers, whom they
identify as petty bourgeois. They have, however, supported the organization of rural workers, and the improvement
of working conditions and wages. The second tendency is the one adopted by the leaders of the FA who, in some
cases, come from the ranks of the Partido Nacional (National Party, PN). They have an extended knowledge of the rural
world and tend to sympathize with its people. The most wellknown representative of this tendency is former
President Mujica himself, but many leaders of the Movimiento de Participacin Popular (Popular Participation Move-
ment, MPP) share this perspective. This is the group that attempted to curb the process of concentration and
foreignization of land (referred to above) by enacting a law that increased taxes on large rural properties of over
2,000 hectares. This initiative encountered little support within the FA and provoked strong criticism from opposition
parties, who argued that it would discourage foreign investment. Subsequently, 100 rural landowners affected by the
law appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice, which declared the law to be unconstitutional and ruled it out.
The third tendency that existed within the FA has been endorsed by the economic team, with contributions from
several of the formal political groups of the FA. It consists of a clear neodevelopmental position, seeking to facilitate
everything that leads to higher land productivity. This group is responsible, for example, for the Foreign Direct
Investment law, and has continuously controlled economic and financial policy. The position of this political group
is that higher land productivity, increased exports that balance trade, and the profitability of agricultural enterprises
allow the Uruguayan state to secure rent through an efficient tax system and to redistribute it through social public

11
In the case of the meat industry, the process is different from that of grains, with a significant degree of concentration. The partic-
ipation of Brazilian capital stands out, with seven meat processing plants, while the Argentines have two meat processing plants and
the British one (Bittencourt, Carracelas, & Reig, 2011). In the case of the forestry sector, there is a strong concentration in the indus-
trial phase as well as vertical integration: two foreign companies control half of the implanted forests (400,000 ha) (Anll, Bisang,
Stubrin, & Monasterios, 2013).
PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC 377

spending towards other sectors of society. The increase in the national minimum wage, the doubling of rural wages,
and other benefits to the poorer sectors channelled by the Ministry of Social Development may have been fuelled by
resources that, at least in part, came from rising incomes from the agricultural sector. These analyses, which should be
taken more as hypotheses, stress that although the FA has won three successive national elections with an absolute
majority, it does not work as a monolithic entity in respect to state and public policies.

3.1.2 | The possibilities and limitations of the family farmers organization

The CNFR is the union organization that represents family farmers who are seriously threatened by the expansion of
agribusiness. Due to conceptual differences, the CNFR is not affiliated with La Va Campesina.
It is necessary to remember that the CNFR was created in 1915, with strong state support, within the context of
the Batllist government that we described previously. Early on, it developed a strong relationship of dependence
towards the state, which differentiates it from other organizations that represent the interests of the subaltern classes
of the countryside in the rest of Latin America, which were often created at as a result of social mobilizations and in
opposition to the state apparatus.
Since 1995, the CNFR has concentrated its efforts on developing and presenting differentiated policy proposals
aimed at small family farmers12 to governmental authorities as its main political activity (CNFR, 2015). According to
Florit and Piedracueva (2015), the CNFR has been unable to adopt a more confrontational or antagonistic position
with respect to the state due to its decision over the past 10 years to use the public funding it has received through
plans and projects to expand territorially and grow its membership. By widening its social base using a broad
and imprecise definition of those who qualify as family farmers, it has made its composition more heterogeneous
(productive, economic, and ideological wise). This has made it more difficult for it to adopt more antagonistic positions
regarding agribusiness and the state and build alliances with other groups subordinated to big capital.
The CNFR is convinced that the state plays a relevant role in guiding the current development model and that the
correct strategy is one of articulation rather than opposition. Its union activities will remain within the rules of the
system, by trying to ensure that the state increases support to family farming, but without questioning the causes that
lead the state to also support agribusiness.

4 | C O N CL U S I O N S

The fall of the profit rate in the core countries, which has intensified since 2008, the speculative rise in the prices of
food and fibre in the world markets, and the relatively low prices of land in Uruguay have led to a massive inflow of
financial capital. This went directly into the purchase of land, for production and value reserve, and into agroindustrial
investments (among others).
What is particular in the case of Uruguay is that this process of accumulation by dispossession is proceeding by
taking advantage of the high levels of indebtedness of the capitalist entrepreneurs of the agricultural sector, as a
consequence of the financial crisis of 2002, following the neoliberal period and policies previously analysed.
Paradoxically, it was a sector of the capitalist entrepreneurs (possibly the inland local oligarchies) that ceded much
of the land to financial capital. As shown in various censuses, a large number of family farmers also sold their land,
but since they had little of it, their share of the transactions amounted to one seventh of the land traded in the first
decade of the new century. In 2005, the FA, a coalition of leftist parties, attained national government 34 years after
being founded. It arrived in power with the support of the young electorate, and the lower and middle classes, after
the traditional parties had been unable to solve the crisis into which the country had been plunged. In line with its
agrarian policy proposals embodied in its political programme, it proposed the coexistence of agribusiness and family
agriculture. In practice, and in line with the rules that stimulated foreign investment, the control exercised by foreign

12
Our translation.
378 PIEIRO AND CARDEILLAC

capital over land and capital was favoured, since it invested in the global commodity chains, thus incorporating the
country into the corporate food regime (McMichael, 2012).
An important process of land concentration and foreignization occurred, as well as that of several commodity
chains linked to the export sector, accompanied by strong levels of growth in the productivity of land and labour.
The FA government established compensatory policies for family farming by pumping state resources through
programmes and projects aimed at this social group, but without stopping its gradual decline.
In line with the tradition of a leftwing partybased coalition, with strong popular and workingclass roots, the FA
government promoted improvement of the wages and working conditions of rural workers, while supporting trade
union organizations. The policy consisted in enforcing existing regulations in order to guarantee the equal exercise
of citizens' rights for rural workers just as for urban workers; to modify the norms that generated an exceptional
regulatory framework that excluded agricultural workers, in order to bring them into the general regulatory regime;
and to introduce new norms that took into account the particular vulnerability of rural workers.
In this sense, the agrarian policy of the FA did not adopt stricter state regulations towards agribusinesses and
financial capital, and therefore it could not avoid the decline of family farming. It did, however, achieve greater
protection and empowerment of rural wage worker organizations.
Somehow, it would seem that as far as the countryside is concerned, the vision of a sector of the left that,
traditionally, has considered the stagnation of agriculture as the main problem for the development of the country
prevailed. In this sense, the penetration of financial capital, with its new forms of organizing production, reinvigorated
an economic and productive structure historically dominated by traditional entrepreneurs, and more inclined to profit
from speculation than by investing in productivity or innovation. At the same time, the surplus obtained from exports
allowed the government to capture the necessary resources to develop policies to attend to the social crisis inherited
from the neoliberal period, and others to lead the development of the country. This was also possible because the
commodity chains that attracted a good part of the FDI associated with the agricultural sector, or the industrial
phase of one of the commodity chains mentioned above, reactivated the labour markets by boosting the demand
for waged labour.
However, as previously argued, the radicalization and deepening of capitalist relations not only changed
agricultural entrepreneurs and ended the stagnation of the countryside. It also unleashed a series of processes: the
concentration and foreignization of land, and the increased dependence of the agricultural phase on the later indus-
trial phase and/or the previous stages of inputs. These made the response and adaptation of family farming more
difficult. The challenge for the leftist government today is to find a way to stop and reverse the population
displacement and the social disarticulation of the Uruguayan countryside that has taken place in recent years. The
problem is that in order to do so, the FA government must first reassess at least part of its agricultural intervention
strategy and, as we have seen, there are strong obstacles to such an exercise, both within and outside the coalition.

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS
We greatly appreciate the constructive comments received from Cristbal Kay and Leandro Vergara Camus on early
versions of the manuscript and from anonymous JAC reviewers.

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How to cite this article: Pieiro DE, Cardeillac J. The Frente Amplio and agrarian policy in Uruguay. J Agrar
Change. 2017;17:365380. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12213