The study indicates that the amounts for them were less than $ 5,000, while they received between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars in the period 2013-2019.
Women have an increasingly important role in agricultural plantations, but this does not match the volume of public credit they receive to acquire land.
In the last 20 years there has been a greater participation of women in the work of the field with a greater weight in the percentage of producers, who are the ones who have decision in the use and management of the farm.
The study Inequities and land: Diagnosis of agrarian policy and land structure in Ecuador, 150 pages long and published this year by the Central University of Ecuador, indicates that 42% of farms smaller than one hectare (ha) were managed by women in 2020. 20 years ago, in 2000, their weight was 40% .
The greatest increase is observed in farms that have between 100 and 200 ha, which in 16% were managed by women last year, while in 2000 they were only 8%. On farms of all sizes, there is a greater participation of women in decision-making, whether by rent, inheritance or as owner.
However, credit has not flowed in the same way. Women producers received two million dollars to buy land in 2013, while men obtained four times more: $ 10.5 million by the public bank Ban Ecuador, in the past known as Banco Nacional de Fomento.
The differences increased. Women received $ 800,000 during 2019 to buy rural properties, men almost eight times more with $ 5.8 million.
From January to August of this year, the producers obtained $ 1.8 million and those who run the farms (producers), $ 4.3 million.
Freddy Montenegro Seguncia, researcher of the study as part of the Research System on Agrarian Problems in Ecuador (Sipae), affirms that credit for the purchase of land decreased even before the pandemic in the period 2013-2019, but this year a recovery is observed with respect to 2020 and 2019, without reaching the levels of 2014 and 2015.
“From April 2013 to August of this year, $ 80 million of public credit has been allocated for the purchase of rural lands, of which $ 17 million were for female producers and $ 63 million for producers. Gender inequality in access to credit remains ”.
One of the keys to access, says Montenegro, is the securitization of rural properties, since with this it can be left as collateral and obtain a loan to acquire more land. “One of the components of the Tierras plan (applied until 2014 during the Rafael Correa regime) was the massive legalization of land and by doing so it facilitated access to credit at the time.”
The problem of the lack of gender equity in obtaining public credits responds to a cultural issue. “It is thought that the man who can make decisions at the farm level is man, so the credit has been destined for them. This is also observed at the leadership level. For example, the boards of irrigators are solid organizations made up mainly of men ”.
The study indicates that the amounts given to women were below $ 5,000, while for men they were from $ 20,000 to $ 100,000 on average in the period 2013-2019.
One of the options, adds the specialist, is the activation of the National Land Fund established in the Constitution and in the Food and Land Sovereignty laws.
“There are two strange interpretations regarding the Fund. The first is that it includes all tangible assets of the State, properties of the Ministry of Agriculture that are distributed, at the end of this the Land Fund was terminated. The second is that it is an amount destined to improve conditions, so that must be defined, ”says Montenegro.
Land tenure continues to be unequal in Ecuador
One of the consequences of the scarce credit for the purchase of farms is that there are no changes in land tenure.
The study in which Sipae participates indicates that the agrarian structure has not changed significantly in more than 77 years. “The three agricultural censuses carried out in 1954, 1974 and 2000 show that there are no important variations regarding inequality in land tenure.”
And comparing with the Continuous Agricultural Production and Area Survey (Espac) carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses each year, “there have been no significant changes in the values of land distribution and ownership” in recent years.
The gap also continues in access to water. In 2020 there were 24,686 authorizations receiving 10,333 liters per second, but also 1,880 authorizations receiving 357,972 liters per second.
The evaluation of changes in the agrarian structure through indicators such as land tenure, the size of agricultural production units (UPA), among others, the study points out, requires data from long periods of years.
Hence, at least ten-year or more comparisons are needed “to obtain reliable results on the movement of the structure within the landowners.”
The methodology was to compare the National Agricultural Census of 2000, the last one carried out, with the Espac of 2017. The result is that 55% of the UPA occupy 31% of the productive land and 5% of large UPAs account for 23% of productive land.
One of the last attempts to redistribute occurred through the Tierras de Correa Plan. The latter wanted the rural properties confiscated during the bank holiday to be handed over to peasant associations, says Melissa Ramos Bayas, a researcher at Sipae.
Its impact was minimal in practice since only 26,790 ha were redistributed until 2014 when it ended. A negligible area in relation to the total area destined for crops in the country, which reached 4’333,284 ha in 2020. “This redistributive policy had the goal of affecting two million hectares, which was not fulfilled. This implied making use of properties that do not fulfill social and environmental functions, unproductive and idle lands, because there are no longer vacant lands in the country to redistribute ”, indicates Ramos.
The policy of the Lenín Moreno government and so far the current one, of President Guillermo Lasso, has focused on land titling processes. “To facilitate that the lands already occupied can settle their conflicts so that they have property titles”, emphasizes the specialist.
The area with permanent crops was 1,442,973 hectares (it is a production generally destined for export). Sugar cane, bananas and African palm are the crops with the highest production at the national level, according to the latest INEC Espac published in May of this year.
Cultivated pastures totaled 2’067,795 ha and transitory crops (key to local nutrition) occupied 822,516 ha.
The area set aside for permanent crops increased 14% between 2002 and 2020, while the area occupied by temporary crops decreased 23.7% in the same period. (I)
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