Scarcity and Survival in Central America by William H. Durham

Author:William H. Durham [Durham, William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Americas, Central America
ISBN: 9780804765664
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1979-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

TABLE 4.3 The Land-Use Potential of Honduras

TABLE 4.4 Characteristics of the Population of Honduras, 1887–1974

SOURCE: Vallejo 1888; HDGEC 1932, 1952, 1954, 1964a, 1964b, 1977. aRecalculated for each vear from census information using 2,500 or more inhabitants as the criterion for urban.

TABLE 4.5 Four Measures of the Population Density of El Salvador and Honduras in the 1960’s (People per square kilometer)

SOURCE: ESDGEC 1965, 1967; HDGEC 1964a, 1968.

But even this recalculated per-capita land advantage is misleading when soil fertility is also taken into account. Let us again take maize production as an indicator. Honduras had an average maize yield of 756.6 kilograms per hectare in 1952, compared with El Salvador’s average of 1,148.6 in 1950 (HDGEC 1954; ESDGEC 1954). If we compute an average production differential for 1950–52, reducing Honduras’s 43 percent size advantage by a 65.9 percent yield disadvantage, our indicator suggests that total productivity in Honduras is only 94.2 percent of that in El Salvador. Such a difference has persisted since the 1950’s, despite improved yields in both countries. Thus, though Honduras’s average maize yield rose to 1,081.3 kilograms per hectare in 1974, this was still only 62.3 percent of El Salvador’s 1971 average of 1,736.9 (HDGEC 1975; ESDGEC 1975). Statistically speaking, Honduras’s cropland advantage is virtually eliminated because of its poor soil. In terms of aggregate statistics, at least, Honduras hardly looks like a comparative “land of plenty” next to El Salvador.

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