ABSTRACT
Throughout the region agriculture has played a crucial role in economic development, and remains a key sector in many countries. This chapter describes how the process of globalisation has affected agriculture and agribusiness in the region and looks at the origins of, the technology behind, and the subsequent development of several key regional crops. The insertion of Middle America into global trade circuits was largely accomplished through the planting and cultivation of three crops: sugar, coffee and bananas and was a result of European colonial influences in the region. The Mexican revolution ushered in the first meaningful Latin American agrarian reform legislation, providing as a consequence both an inspiration for, and yardstick by which to measure, subsequent land redistributions in the region. Land distribution had become increasingly skewed in the pre-revolutionary period. The plantation system developed where economies of scale and process linkages benefited large-scale production.
