We explain what agrarian law is, the interests involved, its sources and importance. Furthermore, agrarian law in Mexico.
What is agrarian law?
Agrarian law is the branch of law that studies and regulates the economic and social relations that arise between the different actors involved in agricultural production. That is, we refer to the legal and legal norms that apply in the case of agricultural exploitation of soils.
Agrarian law It is usually the result of a specific agricultural policy in a given nation, which in itself is a difficult starting point.
It must reconcile often conflicting interests such as ecology, the needs of agricultural production and the social and economic needs of the people in charge of said production, who may well be small producers or large landowners.
In this sense, agrarian law is interested in issues such as agricultural property, rural roads and transit, the health elements of agricultural production, the regime of agricultural associations, water law, the regulation of hunting and fishing. , among many others.
Sources of agrarian law
The sources of agrarian law are not very different from those of other branches of law:
- The custom. Dictated by the traditional way of exploiting the land.
- The rules and the law. That is, the constitutional legal provisions on agricultural matters, especially in cases where there are agrarian laws.
- The jurisprudence. That is, the interpretation of the laws made by the relevant authorities.
Importance of agrarian law
Agrarian law is extremely important in the constitution of nations, since governs a fundamental economic activity such as the production of food and primary consumer goods.
A nation must, above all, guarantee its citizens the availability of food and basic resources, so that the efficient and effective resolution of conflicts in agricultural matters is usually a priority, especially in those nations that live off the export of their agricultural products.
On the other hand, It is the only branch of law capable of ensuring the rational use of natural resources renewable resources of a territory, in which agricultural activity usually has a significant impact. The same occurs with respect to the well-being of the peasant class, which is usually poor and marginalized in many of the nations of the so-called Third World.
Examples of agrarian law
Agrarian law must cover situations such as the following, for example:
- Lawsuits between small agricultural producers and large corporations transnational agricultural companies, especially with regard to the use of seeds (transgenic or not, for example).
- The distribution of arable land and the fight against latifundio, that is, against the possession of large idle extensions of land.
- Control of the application of chemicals and fertilizers that have a high environmental and human impact, and that threaten the perpetuity of agriculture or the well-being of rural inhabitants.
- The resolution of disputes between the State and the peasant class in relation to economic policies (tariffs, taxes, incentives, etc.).
Mexican agrarian law
Since before colonial times, Mexico has attempted to make the best use of arable land, just as the different original cultures that depended on the production and exchange of products such as corn, cotton or cocoa did in their own way.
The conquest and the imposition of colonial laws modified that original order, imposing a property system that distinguished between the private property of the Spanish, the property of indigenous peoples, and the properties of the Catholic Church.
This system naturally lent itself to the benefit of the powerful castes, promoting latifundia despite what was contained in the Hispanic Indies Laws. Thus, after independence, In Mexico there were laws that protected landowners and marginalized the peasant class racially identified, furthermore, with the native peoples.
Precisely for this reason, the 19th century was so conflictive in matters of agrarian law and The dissatisfactions of the peasant class allowed the emergence of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century responsible for some of the most profound changes in agricultural matters in the history of the country.
These changes include the Agrarian Law of January 6, 1915, issued by Venustino Carranza, with total Zapatista spirit. In this period, the National Agrarian Commission was also created in each state of the Mexican Federation, and in 1917 the recognition of Agricultural Communal Property.
These changes were deepened later, during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, who carried out the largest land distribution in Mexican history between 1934 and 1940 for exploitation under the figure of the ejido.
However, the issue of poverty in the Mexican countryside and the tensions inherent to its tenure were never completely eradicated. In 1991, then-president Carlos Salinas proposed the so-called Salinist Reform one of the main contemporary steps in Mexico towards a necessary Agrarian Reform.
Continue with: Environmental law
References
- “Agrarian Law” in Wikipedia.
- “Agrarian Law” in Legal Encyclopedia.
- “Agrarian Law” in Legal Definition.
- “Birth and evolution of agrarian law” by Paola Romero Silva at the University of Guadalajara (Mexico).
