Un polarizado Uruguay: tendencias en la estructura agraria 1990 – 2011

This paper contributes to the comprehension of transformations that have occurred in the rural society of contemporary Uruguay. To do so, three hypotheses were empirically tested. The first studies the relevance and validity of a traditional scheme on Uruguay's agricultural structure that distinguishes between business producers, family producers, and wage earners. For this purpose, a principal component analysis (PCA) on variables from the General Agricultural Census of 1990, 2000, and 2011 was carried out, and different territorial clusters were identified according to the degree of predominance of different types of production (business or family). The second hypothesis proposes the advance of agribusiness logic in Uruguayan agriculture. To study this, the distribution of several attributes identified by the literature discussing the “logic” or “model” of agribusiness was analyzed, evaluating its incidence in the territories identified by cluster analyses carried out over the factors identified by PCA. Finally, a third hypothesis argues that the logic of agribusiness collides with and is antagonistic to the logic of family production. Therefore, the analysis shows a polarized agrarian structure, where production models are increasingly distant.