The history of the land in Paraguay is different from that in most countries of Latin America. Although there has been a system of land grants to the conquerors, Paraguay is characterized by Jesuit, who dominated rural life for over a century.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and later the Spanish, the state had become the owner of 60 percent of the country's land in the mid 19th century. Large tracts of land were sold, especially the middle class to pay the debt of the country's war of the Triple Alliance War. This was the beginning of the concentration of land in Paraguay is in the hands of the Spanish or the local elite, but from foreign investors. Land policy remains controversial until the 1930s when there was a broader consensus for land titling to land users and mediation between landlords and small farms (small holdings). After 1954, the agribusiness multinational, mainly Brazil and the United States played a growing role in the economy, often buying huge tracts of land dedicated to cattle rising, cotton, soybeans and timber.
The most conspicuous change in land tenure from 1956 to 1981 he was the type of ownership of farms. In the 1956 census, 49 percent of all farmers squatted on the land compared to only 30 percent in the 1981 census. These data suggest a growing interest among small farmers in obtaining titles to their lands against the growing pressure on land. The 1981 census also indicated that 58 percent of all farms were fully owned and 15 percent of farms were sharecroppers, the 1956 census showed that 39 percent of the farms belonged to farmers and 12 were worked by sharecroppers percent.
Another striking feature of the 1981 census of agriculture was the great disparity between small and large farms. According to the census, 1 percent of the nation more than 273,000 farms covered 79 percent of farmland in the nation in its use. These large farms owned the land had an average of almost 7,300 hectares. Many of the largest shares were cattle farms in the province of Chaco. By contrast, smaller farms, which constitute 35 percent of all farms covered only 1 percent of the land, making the average size of a small farm 1.7 hectares, or less than necessary for subsistence of a family. However, the census figures of 1981 were fairly more cheering than the year 1956 census that demonstrated that one percent of farms covered eighty seven percent of the land and forty six percent of farms covered only one percent of the land. Another cheering drift that the census was quantified by the decreasing number of farms less than five hectares in size and growth of small and medium farms (5 to 99.9 hectares).
In spite of these encouraging drifts, the 1981 census indicated that a growing issue of landlessness. Census figures indicate that approximately 14 percent of all peasants were landless. The lack of land had historically been mitigated by the underdeveloped nature of the region's eastern border. Because the owners of estates in the region use only a portion of their property, farmers were able to squat on the property without compensation. Pressure on land was also mitigated by the vast expanses of land without title in the east. From the 1960's, however, competition for land in the area increased dramatically. Many property owners sold their land to agribusiness, the new owners, who were committed to an efficient and extensive use of their property, sometimes called the government to remove the occupants of the land.
The squatters also entered into competition with the Paraguayan and Brazilian immigrant settlers. Thousands of settlers were resettled in the eastern region under the government program of land reform. Brazilian immigration was the result of a staged boost in land costs in the 1970s in the adjacent Brazilian state of Parana. Most farmers sold their lands and jumped into Paraguay, where land was not that much costly. In late 1980, at least half the populace in the Canendiyú Department and the Department of Alto Paraná was Brazilian.
