Irrigated Family Farming Panorama in the Latin-American Highlands

Abstract

Although there are statistics and general cartography on irrigation systems in Latin America, this information does not permit to identify the irrigated family farming zones located in the highland areas. In this article we locate and quantify those zones through the use of cartographic methods that helped to identify the zones that meet three requirements: 1) they are irrigated areas; 2) they are located in zones above 1000 m; 3) Their rural population density is higher than 50 inhabitants per km2. The results confirm a wide presence of this type of systems in all Latin-American sub-regions. Nevertheless, due to the restrictions of quality and updating of the information from the available sources, the results given in the present document must be taken as a guideline.