Colombian agriculture during the 1990 decade

Colombian agriculture had a poor performance between 1990 and 1997, mainly as a result of negative macroeconomic trends (e.g. exchange rate apreciation) and the fall of international prices. Nonetheless, the global performance hides an important heterogeneity within the sector. Among tradeable crops, import goods are the ones that had the sharpest falls in profitability, despite the reversion of some of the oppenness measures taken after 1992. However, the non-tradeable goods (as well as the permanent crops) showed a significant recovery in its production levels. Despite the mediocre performance of agriculture, the statistics point with no ambiguity that the quality levels have significantly improved for most of the inhabitants of the rural area between 1990 and 1997. In this period, the majority of the rural population had significant increases in their per capita income. Moreover, the higher growth rates happened in the more depressed sectors of the population.