Cattle raising accounted for some 10 percent of the value added in agriculture for 1986. The cattle population dropped from 1,317,000 head in 1979 to only 1,010,000 head in 1986. Salvadoran farmers raised only 400,000 pigs in 1986, an 11 percent decline from 1979. The declines in production were attributable to widespread overslaughtering--a result of the land reform, which caused some large landowners to slaughter their livestock and sell them rather than lose them to the cooperatives--smuggling, to avoid export taxes, and the effects of the civil conflict.

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Source: U.S. Library of Congress