Desempeño relativo de la productividad física de la ganadería de Nueva Zelanda y Uruguay, 1870-2010

In the nineteenth century, New Zealand and Uruguay were new European settler societies and rich in natural resources. Both countries engaged with the world economy as producers and exporters of livestock products. However, these countries exhibited divergent long-term development. The aim of this article is to identify the main historical tendencies associated with the relative physical productivity of livestock in both countries and to understand convergent-divergent processes in light of their technological trajectories. The main synthetic indicators used in agrarian sciences, such as Livestock Units and Meat Equivalents, are reviewed and a series of corrections that account for the specific features of each agrarian system is proposed for the usual aggregation methods. The technological trajectories that affected livestock productivity growth are also compared. The main results indicate that Uruguayan livestock production fell behind that of New Zealand due to the technological trajectory followed by each country. In the nineteenth century, Uruguay had very favourable natural conditions for livestock production. It did not develop technologies to improve soil and land productivity until the second half of the twentieth century. In contrast, New Zealand began to improve grassland productivity during the nineteenth century in order to increase and diversify livestock production.