Public policies for rural development in the Republic of El Salvador

• Autor(a) principal: Solano Garcia, Marco Tulio Gerardo
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Revista IDEAS (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistaideas.ufrrj.br/ojs/index.php/ideas/article/view/203
• topic: Rural development; Public policies; El Salvador; Desarrollo rural; El Salvador; Políticas públicas; Políticas públicas; El Salvador; Desenvolvimento rural

In El Salvador, the agricultural sector has not been given much attention by the State. The last impulse given was in the 1930’s to start with the cultivation of coffee. From the 1960s the sector suffered from marginalization by the State in terms of public policies regarding welfare for the country and the producers. This oblivion can be explained due to the social, political and economic instability of the country and the consequent outbreak of the civil war that kept El Salvador in a delay in its development in all areas. During the eighties the country suffered the most cruel of the war, which did not allow to establish clear policies that catch the revival of the agricultural sector, which was one of the hardest hit by the armed conflict. To this end, the magic formula of the international organizations of the Structural Adjustment Programs and the Washington Consensus were applied, which ended up sinking the primary sector into a crisis that still cannot overcome. At the end of the signing of the peace accords in 1992, and considering the importance of the agricultural activity, foreign aid provided an opportunity to initiate the revival of agriculture in the country, with the knowledge and technology transfer programmes and the implementation of economic agreements that managed to start with the development of the rural area of the country. However, recovery is slow and the full development hás not yet reach the sector. Currently, the State is trying to provide, through public and private institutions and international organizations, public funding policies that enable rural development, However growth and development have been very slow due to the lack of protagonism of the institutions involved and the limitations of the sector, which has little primary infrastructure, low incorporation of technology, little access to land and property, agricultural inputs at high costs, low technical assistance from the State and high vulnerability to natural phenomena and climate change.