Agricultural and Fisheries Economic Challenges

Posted on Feb 10, 2025 in Geography

Agriculture and Fisheries: Economic Challenges

Agricultural Production

  • Cereals: Human food, livestock feed, and biofuels. Focus on producing higher yields.
  • Legumes: Human and livestock consumption. Production faces difficulties in mechanization and low yields.
  • Vine: Wine and fresh consumption. Production has grown due to improved techniques.
  • Olive: Drought-resistant, used for olive oil. The world’s largest production, but with low mechanization and high prices.
  • Fruit and Vegetables: Fresh consumption or canning. Production increased with rising living standards, providing substantial revenue, but faces competition from cheaper countries.
  • Industrial Crops: Sunflower, sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Production is related to the industry, providing seeds and sometimes instructing farmers.
  • Fodder: Animal feed crop area, mainly in the northern half, requiring extensive irrigation. Production has grown along with livestock.

Livestock Farming

  • Extensive Husbandry: Depends on the physical environment, feeding on grassland in wet areas and pastures in dry areas. Associated with native breeds and traditional techniques, resulting in mixed and intensive farming.
  • Intensive Livestock: Housed, concentrated near urban consumption centers, using selected foreign breeds and modern techniques.
  • Livestock Animals: Meat and milk production are dominant in extensive regimes in the north and intensively near urban centers and fodder-producing areas. Dairy farming is extended or mixed, with intensive farming near cities. Cheaper pig meat and poultry production are increasing, while milk production faces competition from cheaper countries.
  • Sheep: Raised in dry lands, using extended regimens with transhumance. Intensive regimes are intensifying. Production involves introducing foreign breeds, with subsidies given to indigenous breeds.
  • Swine: Used for fresh or cured meats, mainly in Huesca, Lleida, Barcelona, Gerona, Murcia. Production has increased, but there is no global surplus.
  • Poultry: Concentrated in Lleida, Tarragona, Orense, Huelva, Castellon. Production faces lower consumption and import demands. Egg production allows for export.

Economic Problems in Rural Areas

  1. Limited economic diversification: excessive dependence on agricultural activities.
  2. Insufficient use of telecommunications and new technologies.
  3. Growing dependence of the agricultural industry on the market.
  4. Necessity to adopt new requirements for safety, animal health, and welfare: food security (fraud control), health (avoid pests), and animal welfare (properly treated livestock).
  5. Demand for quality and diversification requires adaptation measures.

Economic Problems of Fisheries

  1. The fishing fleet is too large. After entering the EU, the industry began restructuring, including reducing the size of the fleet and offering early retirement to fishing societies, as well as renovating and modernizing the fleet with European funding until 2004.
  2. Weak economic diversification: fishing areas are heavily dependent. Promoting sport fishing and tourist exploitation.
  3. Insufficient use of new technologies: building infrastructure.
  4. Necessity to improve processing and marketing.
  5. Adoption of new safety standards and animal welfare standards (established by the EU).
  6. Responding to the demand for quality requirements.