The Agricultural Frontier and Economic Growth in Ecuador

Abstract

The agricultural frontier in Ecuador has played an important role in the growth of the Ecuadorian economy throughout history. This agricultural expansion has involved the use of new lands, often in previously unexploited regions such as tropical forests. The agricultural frontier has also posed environmental challenges, including deforestation and biodiversity loss, which has created the need to implement sustainable agricultural practices for nature conservation. In this context, descriptive statistics and the vector autoregressive econometric method (VAR) were used to assess the influence of the variables and possible shocks, showing a strong incidence of the predictor variables in the model. These results indicate that the agricultural productive system has not been fully developed, despite the use of techniques and innovation in the field. On the other hand, the lack of public policies and strategies limits the increase in agricultural GDP, even though the agricultural frontier has remained moderately stable over time in recent years.