Poverty vrs. Agriculture: a geographic analysis that describes a close relationship between both concepts.
This Thesis work describes a Geographic analysis of the relationship between biophysic and socioeconomics variables and their influence in categories of poverty on Guatemala's territory.
(By M. De la Vega, C. Duarte and T. Rosada, Universidad Rafael Landivar, Guatemala, 2003)

ABSTRACT:
During almost 20 years, 58% of the Labor Force in Guatemala has corresponded to the Agriculture and Fishing sector. Nevertheless, the incidence of poverty in the rural areas of the country, characterized in its majority by agricultural jobs, is almost three times greater than in the urban area.

This investigation has evaluated indicators of two biophysic variables (Land Use and Capacity), and five socioeconomic variables (Road Infrastructure, Intensity of Land Use, Irrigated areas priority, Poverty rate, Literacy rate, Health infrastructure, Infantile Undernourishment and Human Development Index) to evaluate them geographically according to categories of poverty in the Map of Incidence (%) of Municipal Poverty, elaborated by Secretaria de Planificacion y Programacion de la Presidencia de la Republica de Guatemala -SEGEPLAN -.

Techniques of relational databases and digital maps overlay from all the country on a 1:250,000 scale were used, applying tools of GIS software ArcView. The common codification was the Four Digits Municipal Nomenclature of the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica -INE-. Those indicators were organized and  geographically compared.

The final product was the elaboration of thematic maps that were interpreted, according to the criteria of experts in socioeconomic, agriculture and geographic analysis.

Finally, two important conclusions were established:

a. Evaluated biophysic and socioeconomic variables in the study have a close relation with poverty's categories in Guatemala.

b. Traditional agriculture techniques are not the best option to eradicate 74% of the rural population poverty.
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My Info: Forestry, Agriculture and Geographic Information Systems investigations
Name: Manuel de la Vega
Email:
manuel_delavega@yahoo.com
Links about GIS, Poverty and Agriculture:
World Bank
SIG-MAGA
FAO
World Resources Institute