Vine-growing in Catalonia: the main agricultural change underlying the earliest industrialization in Mediterranean Europe (1720–1939)

Abstract

We present a model of vine-growing specialization that explains the key agricultural change carried out before and throughout the Catalan industrialization. The results confirm the role played by a "Smithian" market-pull force exerted from the Atlantic demand, together with the "Boserupian" population-push on land-use intensification. They jointly put in motion a process of opening and closing of an inner frontier of vineyard planting, whose local impact was conditioned by the agroecological endowments as well as to the different levels and trends of income inequality. Vineyard planting gave rise to less inequality up to the 1820s, but it grew again afterwards.

Surplus, Scarcity and Soil Fertility in Pre-Industrial Austrian Agriculture—The Sustainability Costs of Inequality

“…A second option to cope with the sustainability costs of inequality was to substitute subsistence crops for cash crops. Badia-Miro and Tello [21] and Parcerisas [22] have shown that, in Catalonia, vineyard specialization helped to alleviate subsistence pressure under pre-industrial conditions. In the seven sample villages, however, opportunities to shift to more intensive wine-growing seemed to be rather limited, as the historical sources indicate that significant amounts of manure were applied to vineyards already [94].…”

“…Even though Gonzalez de Molina and Toledo [3] have pointed out that an unequal distribution of materials, energy and nutrients within a specific socio-economic system may cause sustainability problems and lead to overexploitation of the resource base, the socio-economic conditions of peasant production and reproduction have largely been neglected in SEM research. Thus far, only a few authors [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] have tried to explicitly address the unequal distribution of resources within pre-industrial agriculture to open their SEM research for political analysis.…”

More than energy transformations: a historical transition from organic to industrialized farm systems in a Mediterranean village (Les Oluges, Catalonia, 1860–1959–1999)

“…The greater complexity and heterogeneity of cropland also benefited farm-associated biodiversity (Alam et al, 2014;Altieri & Nicholls, 2002Palma et al, 2007;Rigueiro-Rodríuez, McAdam & Mosquera-Losada, 2009). The relatively high population density of Les Oluges in 1860 (42 inhabitants/ km 2 ) is the midpoint between traditional intensive organic agricultures with a strong vineyard specialisation (60 inhabitants/km 2 or above) and the densities found in extensive cereal-growing regions of inner Spain (25 inhabitants/km 2 or below) at that time (Badia-Miró & Tello, 2014;Garrabou, Tello & Cussó, 2008).…”

Land-use and rural inequality profiles in the province of Barcelona in mid-nineteenth century

“…For example, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem states that under a Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade, a rise in the relative price of a good will lead to an increase in the return to the factor that is used most intensively in the production of the good traded, and to a fall in the return to the other factors less intensively used. Yet, this does not apply when a commercial specialisation sets in motion the advance of an agricultural frontier that extends the cropland area of the commodity being grown and sold abroad -at least as long as the frontier remains open (Greasley, Inwood & Singleton, 2007;Harley, 2007;Santiago-Caballero, 2011;Badia-Miró & Tello, 2014). These examples stress the importance of several contingent historical factors that frame how the disputed entitlement of natural resources affects who benefits from their use (Badia-Miró, Pinilla & Willebald, 2015).…”

“…The discussion above makes it very relevant to study how the agricultural specialization in brandies and wines that took place in Catalonia since the mid-17 th century to the Phylloxera plague in the late 19 th century affected income inequality (Vilar, 1962;Giralt, 1965;Valls-Junyent, 2004;Badia-Miró & Tello, 2014;Colomé et al, 2016). Many historical monographs have pointed out that the spread of vineyards in this north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula led to a less unequal rural society (Garrabou, Tello & Cussó, 2008;Garrabou et al, 2009;Badia-Miró & Tello, 2014;Tello & Badia-Miró, 2015).…”