All through its history, agriculture has been the basis of the economy of Paraguay. This drift has sustained today and the late 1980 the agricultural segment in general, forty eight percent of employment in the country, twenty three percent of Gross Domestic Products and ninety eight percent of export earnings.

The food industry had a sturdy food and cash crop base, a major livestock subsector, including livestock and meat production, and a vivacious timber industry.

Agricultural growth was very quick since the 1970s to the 1980s, a time when prices of cotton and soybeans soared, and farmland growing a crop as a result of agricultural migration. The development in agriculture declined from an average growth of 7.5 percent annually in the decade from 1970 to about 3.5 percent by mid-1980 and the end. Agricultural production was affected by weather conditions regularly. Floods in year 1982 and 1983 and brutal droughts in 1986 hurt not only agriculture, but due to the important role of the segment, nearly all sectors of the economy as well.

Overall, however, the progress made by the segment in the course of the 1970 and 1980 did not reach most of the small farmers, who sustained to use conventional farming procedures and lived on a survival level. In spite of the plenty of land, distribution of agricultural land in the country remains highly unequal, favoring large farms. Epitomizing the nation’s economic movement in general, the agricultural segment was strengthening its rapid expansion in the past two decades and only beginning to tap its full potential in late 1980.