Article ID: CBB588217174

Soils, scale, or elites? Biological innovation in Uruguayan cattle farming, 1880–1913 (2023)

unapi

This article examines the economics of innovation in livestock rearing during the first globalisation in Uruguay, the country with the most cattle per person in the world, both then and now. Using a new historical dataset of Uruguayan agriculture, the first one at a sub-provincial level, I exploit regional differences in the adoption of cattle crossbreeding – the genetic improvement of local herds through hybridisation with foreign breeds. Contrary to traditional historiographical claims, I find that this innovation was not primarily explained by the location of enlightened elites (European or local) or by the scale of productive units (i.e. latifundia); rather, rural producers invested in crossbreeding wherever their local landscapes and previous productive choices encouraged it. While it affected biological processes that spanned several agricultural calendars, and thereby developed more slowly than innovations in crop farming, technical change in Uruguayan ranching was also environmentally sensitive, largely scale-neutral, congruent with previous agricultural patterns, and hinged on a widespread response from producers.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB588217174/

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Authors & Contributors
Theunissen, Bert
Derry, Margaret Elsinor
Grasseni, Cristina
Novick, Tamar
Appuhn, Karl Richard
Arnold, David
Journals
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Technology and Culture
Agricultural History
Environmental History
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of the History of Biology
Publishers
Yale University
Stanford University Press
University of Illinois Press
Concepts
Breeding
Cattle
Agriculture
Agricultural economics
Globalization; internationalization
Animals
People
Johannsen, Wilhelm Ludvig
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
18th century
21st century
Places
Italy
Netherlands
United States
Great Britain
India
Iran
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