the province of Cotopaxi, some families live in simple one room shacks made of grass and clay while others occupy relatively modem brick or cement houses with electricity, water and separate latrine failities. Similarly, the distribution of land and its quality is strikingly unequal in Jatun Era.

This intra-community heterogeneity may result from unequal access to land or may be related to the family cycle. Certain families may dominate (both economicaly and politically) because of particularly favorable access to productive land or for their capacity to generate income from small businesses. A second source of differentiation within the community is related to the family cycle. Frequently, young people lack access to land, while their elders retain uncultivated land because grown children have left the household or as a result of widowhood. In this sense, intra-community stratification based on landownership is not necessarily permanent, but may, rather, have a cyclical component. The effects of inequality based on family cycles can, in some cases, be offset by forms of organization (as observed, for instance, in indigenous communities in the Sierra) that provide for the exchange of resources (e.g., land for labor). NW will revisit this point later on.

# _2.2. Poverty and Productive Resources: Landr, Credit and Market Access_

For many rurl households, access to land, water and credit is limited which can lead to a vicious circle of pmverty and soil destruction. Almost all rural households try to complement income from agricultural activities, which remains the most important income source for almost all fimilies, with other earnings. But if the household is not very successful in obtaining other incomes, the pressure on maximizing agricultural production in the short run increases. Due to an increase in land pressure and stagnant productivity, smallholders then replace traditional, sustainable cultivation techniques with more intensive alternatives that increase the likelihood of soil exhaustion and erosion. Consequently, smallholders enter a vicious circle of poverty and environmental degradation that is essentially based on inadequate access to land and other productive resources.

[and. Land ownership in Ecuador has been highly concentrated since the colonial period, and unequal distribution continues to the present day. The agrarian reform process resulted in the gradual transfer of relatively small proportions of agricultural and pasture land to indigenous and peasant communities, which generally received the most unproductive and fragile lands. In particular, small land holdings in the Sierra are frequently so steeply sloped that even the most meticulous stewardship can not maintain soil fertility indefinitely, so that in many communities, soil erosion has reached alarming levels. While smallholdings undergo constant subdivision because of demographic pressure and inheritance pattems,<sup>4</sup> large holdings have been consolidated. As shown in World Bank (1995), the Gini coefficient of land distribution stayed relatively constant between 1954 and 1994. While the modem hacienda is more capital intensive and somewhat more compact The only two national agricultuml censuses conducted in Ecuador reveal that the average size of the minifundia (holding of less than five hectares) decreased from 1.71 **hectares** to 1.54 **hectsres** between 1954 and 1974.

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