Abstract

BARRIENTOS, Juan Carlos  and  CASTRILLON, Gisela. Employment generation in the Colombian agrarian sector. Agron. colomb. [online]. 2007, vol.25, n.2, pp.383-395. ISSN 0120-9965.

The Colombian agrarian sector, in spite of having reduced its percentage of contribution to the GDP, is strategically relevant as an employment generator in the rural area. But how has employment generation been developed in the Colombian agrarian sector in the past years? What are the factors that influence employment generation in the Colombian agrarian sector the most? And what are the perspectives of employment generation in the Colombian agrarian sector? This research pretended to answer the previous questions. In order to determine factors that inf luence employment generation, correlations of generated employment and the variables coming from the national statistics, such as wages, credits to the sector, production, migration, exports and imports, among others, have been used. In order to facilitate analysis, the sector was subdivided into subsectors and groups of crops. The study showed that, in general, the agrarian sector has a growing capacity for employment generation. However, the animal production subsector has a negative tendency. For departments, the tendencies of generating agrarian employment are, in most of the cases, positive, but there are also cases with negative tendencies and other without changes. The factors that have shown to be most influential in generating employment in the subsector of vegetable production are availability of credit, intensive production systems, and low value of land for crop production. The wages and crop export do not have a high relevance. In the subsector of animal production, the main determinant is technological development (tecnification and specialization) that, in turn, is determined by availability of credit, exports, wages and the production of meat.

Keywords : employment agrarian sector; agriculture credit; technological development; wages.

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