Nevertheless, these rural families make up only 20 per cent of the territory, so the demand for accessible lands puts these farmers directly against large extensions of lands for extensive cattle, agriculture or rice production, as well as tree plantations for cellulose pulp export.

The organization that gathers Uruguayan family farmers, the National Commission for Rural Promotion (CNFR), which will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year, has worked throughout all these years on the problem of land access, tenure and use.

The 100th anniversary of CNFR coincides with the 200th anniversary of the “Provisional Regulation”, a document from 1815 which clearly established the agrarian and radical nature of the revolution for independence, which had Jose Gervasio Artigas as the leading figure in Rio de la Plata.

For this reason, a dialogue was organized a few days ago to analyze what is considered the first radical agrarian reform of the anticolonial period, where the Head of CNFR, Mario Buzzalino, highlighted the importance of access to land for family and peasant farming in Uruguay, and therefore for the food sovereignty of the country.