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Agriculture

Paraguay is the sixth-largest soybean producer in the world, the second-largest producer of stevia and the ninth-largest exporter of beef.

In 2018, in addition to soy, the country had a large production of maize and sugar cane, where it positioned itself as the 21st largest producer in the world; other important cultures of the country are cassava, rice, wheat, orange, yerba mate, and sorghum. In livestock, Paraguay produced, in 2020, 481 thousand tons of beef, being the 26th largest producer in the world.

Soy farming was largely introduced by Brazilians: in 2019, almost 70% of soy and rice producers in Paraguay were people from Brazil, or descendants of Brazilians (the so-called brasiguaios). The first Brazilian producers began to arrive in the country in the 1980s. Before the Brazilian influx, much of the land in Paraguay was uncultivated.

More than 80% of the cultivable land is owned by 2.6% of landowners. Nearly 8 million hectares were illegally granted, in violation of the agrarian law, to regime supporters during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989), and the state has done nothing since to identify the beneficiaries of this illicit enrichment. These owners include generals, businessmen, and politicians, former presidents of the Republic, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and even the ruling Colorado Party. More than 130 peasant leaders have been assassinated since the fall of Stroessner in 1989.

The methods of appropriating land in Paraguay are numerous. Economist Luis Rojas says that the most common method is to buy land from small producers: "The peasant is offered a sum of money he has never seen in his life. He imagines it's a fortune, leaves for the city, spends it all in three or four months and makes the misery belts grow, because there is no work." Oxfam estimates that 900,000 people have been evicted from the countryside in the last ten years, which represents nearly one-seventh of the population. This crowd of landless peasants is swelling the poverty belts around Asunción, the capital.