The Importance of the Agriculture for a Country wk10a

The agriculture is an important source of economy for a country; it gives a lot of money, especially in the XVI century where most of the people worked in farms cultivating food and other things.

People had ranches and there they worked like farmpeople. The ranches had of different sizes, that depended of the amount of things the people had, so if they had a cow he would have 10 hectares, if the person had 20.000 cows, he would have a million of hectares. “Es decir que la tierra era esencialmente un factor fundamental en la organización de una hacienda pero no era en si misma, un fin” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 102. The people that helped farming were slaves; they had to work a lot and all the profit would be for the owner of the ranch.

The ranches at first were distributed by taking neighbour and Pre-Colombia lands. The fight for the land was very common. The people that had more money use their influences to corrupt the people that were in charge of distributing the lands properly. “Es esta lucha jurídica lo que ha llamado la atención de algunos estudiosos mas que otros aspectos de la vida empresarial” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 103.

All the products of the ranch were sold, some of them to other countries. One of the most important products was the cocoa (it was the first product to get to Spain), the corn and the coffee. “En consecuencia el cacao no fue solo un producto de consumo y factor de riqueza sino que fundo sentimientos de vanidad y orgullo” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 112.

The agriculture gave a lot of money to the land owners, because the people that helped them were slaves so they didn’t have to pay them. The state began to make them pay a tax of 5% of their profit. With that tax they still earned a lot of money.

So being an agriculturer produced a lot of money if you were the land owner. But I think that the land owners took a lot of advantage of the slaves. They treated them very badly, and they didn’t pay them. The slaves had not rights, they were treated like animals. What do you think? Do you think that’s a good or a bad thing? How would you think that the slaves should have been treated?