page_title: History of agriculture in Chile
section_title: Early Republican Era
hierarchical_section_title: History of agriculture in Chile / Early Republican Era
caption_attribution_description: Español: Cornelio Saavedra, oficial chileno, en reunión con caciques mapuches durante la primera fase de la Ocupación de la Araucanía .
context_page_description: Agriculture in Chile has a long history dating back to the Pre-Hispanic period. Indigenous peoples practised varying types of agriculture, from the oases of the Atacama Desert to as far south as the Guaitecas Archipelago. Potato was the stapple food in the populous Mapuche lands. Llama and chilihueque herding was practised by various indigenous groups.
  The arrival of the Spanish disrupted in many places local agriculture as indigenous populations shrunk and mining rose to prominence. Mapuches in south-central Chile adopted sheep, wheat and the horse from the Spanish. Further south in Chiloé apple trees and pigs proved successful introductions into local potato-based agriculture. As the Spanish were repulsed from much of southern Chile Central Chile became increasely populated and expoited with husbandry becoming the most prominent agricultural activity in Spanish-ruled areas in the 17th century. In parallel to husbandry vineyards did also became more important. Spanish agriculture, centered on the hacienda, absorbed most of the scattered and declining indigenous populations of Central Chile.
context_section_description: The independence wars in Chile (1810–1818) and Peru (1809–1824) had a negative impact on the Chilean economy. Trade was disrupted and armies in Chile pillaged the countryside. The war made commerce a high risk activity and royalist Peru, then the only market for Chilean agricultural products, was closed to commerce with independent Chile. The Guerra a muerte phase was particularly destructive for the Biobío area and ended only to see a period of outlaw banditry (e.g. Pincheira brothers) occur until the late 1820s.
  The Chilean silver rush that developed from 1830s onward led a significant impact in agriculture as rich miners invested in the agriculture sector. German immigrants that arrived from 1850 to 1875 pioneered the use of wage labour in agriculture.
  In the 19th century, access to the Californian and Australian markets made wheat export a very lucrative activity. In the mid 19th century, these countries experienced large gold rushes which created a large demand for wheat. Chile was at the time the "only wheat producer of some importance in the Pacific". At the same time as the wheat cycle new irrigation canals were built and apiculture and some machines introduced into Chilean agriculture. Apart from that, new markets were explored for Chilean agricultural products. The wheat boom did not last for long; by 1855 California managed to supply itself with wheat and from 1858 onwards it went over to export wheat to Chile. The Australian gold rush of 1851 had the effect of decreasing the labour used in agriculture forcing the colony to import wheat from Chile sustaining Chilean wheat exports whilst the Californian market vanished. After the gold rushes of California and Australia were over these regions begun exporting wheat competing with Chilean wheat forcing from the mid-1860s onwards wheat exports to be shifted to England. Between 1850 and 1875 the area cultivated with wheat and barley for export in Chile rose from 120 to 450 ha. The "cycle" came to an end in the late 1870s due to the increased technification of agriculture in the United States and Argentina plus the competition of Russia and Canada. The end of the wheat cycle added to the already difficult situation that Chilean economy was passing through in the 1870s.
  Until the mid-19th century more than 80% of Chilean population remained rural working in agriculture or mining and was to a large degree self-sufficient to produce articles of consume.
  Starting in 1873, Chile's economy deteriorated. In agriculture this was seen as Chilean wheat exports were outcompeted by production in Canada, Russia, and Argentina. As the victor and possessor of a new coastal territory following the War of the Pacific, Chile benefited by gaining a lucrative territory with significant mineral income. The national treasury grew by 900 percent between 1879 and 1902, due to taxes coming from the newly acquired lands. British involvement and control of the nitrate industry rose significantly, but from 1901 to 1921 Chilean ownership increased from 15% to 51%. The growth of Chilean economy sustained in its saltpetre monopoly meant, compared to the previous growth cycle (1832–1873), that the economy became less diversified and overly dependent on a single natural resource.
  The establishment of the Buenos Aires-Mendoza railroad in 1885 ended the lengthy and costly trade with carts that connected these two regions of Argentina and facilitated cattle exports from the pampas to Chile, albeit in the last portion of the route the cattle had to walk over the high mountain passes of the Andes. These imports resulted in a lowering of meat prices in Chile. Sociedad Nacional de la Agricultura (National Agriculture Society), a landowners organization, pushed for a tariff on Argentine cattle and in 1897 the tariff was passed in a bill at the Chilean congress. The unpopular tariff resulted a massive protest in that degenerated into a destructive riot in Santiago on October 1905. Chilean wine exports to Argentina were hampered by the lack of effective land transport and a series of war scares. This situati
caption: Cornelio Saavedra Rodríguez in a meeting with the main Mapuche loncos of Araucania in 1869. With the Occupation of the Araucanía, that culminated in the 1880s, new lands were made available for non-indigenous agriculture.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:09:20 03:39:39", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8424", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1428", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "938"}