The development of intensive livestock farming in Western Europe after 1950 has been somewhat overlooked by historians, except in a number of macroeconomic works. This process has generally been understood as the application of the American agribusiness model to the European livestock sector through the direct and vertical connection between large feed companies and local farmers. Spain is a good place to test this idea, given the phenomenal expansion experienced by its livestock sector in the second half of the twentieth century and the strong influence large multinational, particularly American, feed manufacturers had on this growth. Oral histories offer insight into the microeconomic forces at work in the recent development of Spanish livestock farming and highlight the role of local entrepreneurs in the establishment of livestock agribusiness.
The aim of this study is to determine whether the Spanish path of agrarian change, between 1950 and 2005, exhibits some features important enough to differentiate it from the common model of developed countries in Western Europe. On the one hand, the Spanish agrarian transformations share the main features which took place in Western Europe: technological innovation, increased production and productivity, loss of importance of the agricultural sector, tight integration with the industrial sector and, finally its high impact on the environment. On the other hand, a series of important peculiarities can be observed in the Spanish agrarian change: strong expansion of intensive livestock farming; importance of increased irrigation to explain the transformation of agriculture; policies that offered very little support to the agricultural sector under a dictatorship that denied a voice to farmers; maintaining a very prominent role in the economy despite its small contribution to GDP.
Key-words:Agricultural change, European agriculture, Agricultural policies, European economic history
ResumenEl objetivo de este trabajo es comparar el modelo de cambio agrario español entre 1950 y 2005 con el predominante en los países europeos occidentales en el mismo periodo. Nuestras conclusiones ponen de relieve que ambos comparten las mismas características principales: innovación tecnológica, incremento de la producción y la productividad, pérdida de importancia relativa del sector agrario, fuerte integración con el sector industrial y alto impacto medioambiental. Sin embargo, el cambio agrario en España ha tenido una serie de peculiaridades destacadas, como son la fuerte expansión de la ganadería intensiva, la creciente importancia del regadío para explicar las transformaciones agrarias, unas políticas públicas que ofrecieron un escaso apoyo al sector agrario bajo una dictadura que impedía la participación de los agricultores en el diseño de las políticas agrarias y el mantenimiento de un papel destacado del sector a pesar de su pequeña contribución al producto interior bruto Palabras clave: Cambio agrario, agricultura europea, políticas agrarias, historia económica europea JEL CODES: N54, O13, Q18 1
This paper explains how technological developments and changes in production encouraged and drove the processes of agricultural modernisation that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, taking the region of Aragon in north eastern Spain as a case study. The main agricultural macro-variables reveal a surge in output, coincident with a far-reaching restructuring of production, in which livestock and animal feeds played a key role. The relative success of this high speed agricultural transformation was largely due to technological progress and the development of Aragon's trade links before 1936. Meanwhile, the earlier development of irrigation schemes, the capitalisation of farms and experimentation with different seed varieties allowed the region to adapt quickly to the new Green Revolution technologies that came to the fore after 1950. At the same time, established trade links allowed a swift transition to livestock and related produce destined for fast developing agro-industrial regions, like Catalonia and Valencia. As in other countries, technological and trade path dependency also explain the polarisation of agricultural development within Aragon itself, and in particular the success of the provinces of Zaragoza and Huesca in contrast to failure and depopulation in Teruel. The experience of Aragon may thus be useful to understand the dynamics of other less developed regions currently in the throes of transformation.
La mecanización del campo español posterior a 1950 se ha entendido tradicionalmente como un proceso de innovación inducida, consecuencia del éxodo rural que encareció la mano de obra. Por esta misma razón, se ha considerado que el proceso sólo despegó con fuerza durante la década de 1960. Este artículo resalta la importancia en la incorporación de tractores ya en la España de los años cincuenta, pese a la existencia de fuertes barreras administrativas para la adquisición de los mismos. Frente a la trascendencia otorgada habitualmente a la variación en los salarios agrarios, este trabajo destaca la negativa evolución de los precios relativos (en parte derivada de la política de precios franquista), como el estímulo principal para la mecanización durante el decenio de 1950. No obstante, las graves dificultades exteriores de la economía española obstaculizaron la adquisición de tractores, sometiéndola a un complejo entramado administrativo para el reparto de los equipos. Este artículo da cuenta de tal entramado, así como de la distinta capacidad de respuesta que mostraron las provincias españolas, en función de la habilidad de los agentes e instituciones para maniobrar en dicho escenario.
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