Description
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.