This volume is a compilation of essays that reviews the current status of agricultural progress in Latin America and evaluates its prospects into the 1990s. Various experts on Latin American affairs offer analyses that examine how economic and political changes over the past two decades, both regional and worldwide, have resulted in an imbalance between stagnation of output growth and modernization. Convinced that stability is vital to agricultural prosperity within the region, this study defines the major obstacles to this goal and develops new strategies to successfully meet the challenge. Although the work's identification of the issues that are common to the entire geographical area is of significant value, the author of each essay brings his unique experience within the particular country to the study, resulting in a review of the diverse agricultural conditions that exist in each country, thereby hoping to stimulate further debate over their specific management. Each chapter studies a different country with reference to prices, technology, government policies, land tenure, and labor markets. The effect of increased democratization and the continuing changes within the major nations of the world figure prominently, and together with numerous illustrative tables, the articles provide up-to-date data that help discern current trends in agricultural growth both within each state and the entire region.

This study provides a timely and useful benchmark for analysis of the effects of the recently negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement on investment flows. It also presents a unified history of foreign investment in Canada, Mexico, and the United States over the twentieth century, stressing interactions among these countries and their changing policies towards inward and outward investment. Twomey analyzes economic theories of foreign investment from the perspectives of neoclassical economics and political science and places them in the context of the ongoing debate over neo-protectionist policies and the role of the United States in the global economy.