Key Concepts in Agriculture, Industry, and Trade
Agriculture
Agriculture is the set of skills and expertise used to cultivate land. The primary sector is devoted to it. It encompasses the various activities of soil treatment and plant crops. It includes a whole range of human actions that transform the natural environment to make it more suitable for growing crops.
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a tenure status of land that relates to the owner who works it. This is a variable contract, for which the employee pays the owner a proportion of crop production or livestock production. Usually, the owner provides the land, machinery, and seeds, and pays taxes. The sharecropper provides labor. In Spain, sharecropping was widespread in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, Aragon, Navarra, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, Extremadura, and Castilla la Mancha. It has now greatly diminished, fitting more into a closed or subsistence economy.
Rural Settlement Disperse
Rural settlement disperse refers to human settlements in rural areas where houses are separated and surrounded by land composed of fields, meadows, or forests. It can be:
- Totally dispersed: when all houses are isolated from each other.
- Interspersed: when houses are scattered from nuclei.
- Loosely concentrated: when there are small clusters of houses or villages scattered.
Irrigated Agriculture
Irrigated agriculture occurs with the water supply provided by the farmer through channels that capture natural or artificial surface water or through groundwater extraction wells.
Crop Rotation
Crop rotation is the alternation of crops to avoid land degradation. Currently, fallow land is replaced by forage, and spring grains are replaced by sugar beet and other industrial crops. This increases livestock and food production for agriculture-related industries.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was created in 1961 (Spain joined in 1986) to ensure the living standards of farmers, stabilize market prices, and ensure supplies to consumers.
Livestock
Housing (barn) is used to keep animals inside a building. Housing systems are used mainly in cattle breeding. There are two main types:
- Traditional housing: when animals are raised in a limited space within the building.
- Free housing: when animals are loose around the building.
Livestock consists of cattle-raising animals for their use. Cattle are principally engaged in the production of meat and milk. Livestock farming is a system of animal food production based on three principles:
- Respect for animals: ensuring that exploited animals enjoy minimum welfare conditions to meet their physiological needs.
- Respect for the environment: supporting production and conservation of natural resources by positively integrating livestock into the landscape.
- Respect for the consumer: preventing the supply of synthetic chemicals that generate waste, similar to those who eat meat, cheese, or milk, and caring for product quality.
Agricultural Traceability
Agricultural traceability is a procedure introduced by the EU to increase food security. It is the ability to know the course of a product in all its stages from the farm to the market to determine, if necessary, the responsibilities of each phase.
Raw Materials and Energy
Raw Materials
Raw materials are resources extracted from nature and subsequently transformed by industrial activity. There are several types of raw materials:
- Plant: flax, cotton
- Animal: fur, wool, leather
- Mineral: iron, gold, copper, marble, bauxite
Renewable Energies
Renewable energies are types of energy that are constantly renewing and inexhaustible. They are also called alternative energy (given this name because they have started being used as an alternative to non-renewable energy). These include solar, geothermal, wind, tidal, and biomass energy. Hydropower is also considered renewable. Spain has excellent conditions for the development of some of these energies, like solar, of which there are currently several plants in operation (Almeria, Ciudad Real, Madrid, etc.).
Public Services and Transport
Public Services
Public services are provided by the state or government with money raised through taxes. Their goal is to provide goods to society, addressing deficiencies in areas like health or education.
Transport
Transport is the activity that moves people and goods between geographical locations. It uses different modes: land, sea, or air. It is a core activity within human development.
Transport Infrastructure Construction
Transport infrastructure construction applies to the shipment of goods from origin to destination. This definition extends from road construction for the movement of vehicles (road infrastructure) to those for warehousing, storage, and/or transfer of goods from one vehicle to another. Due to the multitude of possible combinations of origins and destinations, transportation infrastructure adopts a network configuration.
PEIT – Strategic Infrastructure and Transport Plan
The PEIT (Strategic Infrastructure and Transport Plan) aims to achieve a balanced transportation system that promotes effective territorial and social cohesion, environmental sustainability, and economic competitiveness.
Trade
Foreign Trade
Foreign trade is the exchange of goods and services between a country and the rest of the world. Exports are sales of domestic products abroad, and imports are purchases of foreign goods by a country.
Trade
Trade is a socio-economic activity involving an exchange of materials that are free in the market through the buying and selling of goods and services, whether for use, resale, or processing. It is the exchange or dealing of something for something else of equal value. Commercial or industrial activities refer to the exchange of goods or services affected by a merchant or trader.
Large Stores
Large stores are large establishments that offer a variety of products designed to cover a wide range of needs: food, clothing, household items, decorations, etc. They are located in central cities and often have multiple floors, dividing their sales area into sections. They differ from malls because they are owned by one company and are one enormous store, not a group of different stores. They differ from hypermarkets because food is not the top priority in sales.
Commercial Area
A commercial area consists of the geographic area whose population is directed preferentially to a large town to buy goods that are not of first necessity. All provincial capitals are centers of the most important commercial areas of the province.
Tourism
Tourist Area
Tourist areas are spacious and have a high density of tourists, either foreign or domestic. They can be seasonal if seasonality is higher than the average tourist area or have extended stays or occasional visits without noticeable seasonality related to historical heritage. Tourist areas can have high, low, or medium density.
Tourist Spot
Tourist spots are isolated, tied to specific attractions such as ski resorts, rural tourism centers, and historic cities. They can be seasonal if seasonality is higher than the average tourist area or have extended stays or occasional visits without noticeable seasonality related to historical heritage.
Energy Sources
Renewable Energy Sources
Renewable energy sources are types of energy that are constantly renewed and are inexhaustible. They are also called alternative energy (given this name because they have started being used as an alternative to non-renewable energy). These include solar, geothermal, wind, tidal, and biomass energy. Hydropower is also considered renewable. Spain has excellent conditions for the development of some of these energies, like solar, of which there are currently several plants in operation (Almeria, Ciudad Real, Madrid, etc.).
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear fission is currently used. It comes from the fission or separation of heavy atoms, such as uranium. It grew from the oil crisis, but its spread was halted due to opposition from public opinion to the problems involved, such as external dependence on uranium supply.
Hydropower
Hydropower is electricity produced from the mechanical energy derived from moving water in a reservoir that falls on turbines at high speed. It is a renewable and low-pollution energy source, though highly dependent on geographic and climatic conditions. Spain is a country very rich in hydropower resources, with greater capacity reservoirs corresponding to the basins of the north, the Douro, Tagus, and Ebro.
Industry
Industrial Activity
Industry is the set of processes and activities that aim to transform raw materials into finished products in bulk. There are different types of industries, depending on the products they manufacture. For its development, industry needs raw materials and machinery and equipment to transform them.
Industrial Restructuring
Industrial restructuring is a policy aimed at ending the industrial crisis. Businesses in difficulty should be subject to layoffs and production, economic health, etc. Then, the regions affected by this restructuring will be subject to the reorganization of their industrial structure. In Spain, the restructuring of the metallurgical sector in the 1980s was very severe. The conversion is to create the conditions necessary for the production system, in its most affected by the crisis and technological advances, to ensure profitable business development from an economic and social standpoint. Urgent Reindustrialization Zones created in 1985 are part of the policy of restructuring and re-industrialization.
Mass Production
Mass production was a revolutionary process in industrial production whose base is the assembly line, a form of production organization that delegates to each worker a specific function and specialized machines. This idea was born with the Taylor theory but matured in the twentieth century with Henry Ford. In the late twentieth century, it was superseded by a new form of industrial organization called Toyota, which has deepened in the twenty-first century.
Enterprise
An enterprise is an organization or institution engaged in economic and commercial activities. There are a variety of definitions. A company is a system that interacts with its environment, materializing an idea in a planned way, satisfying some demands and desires of customers through an economic activity. It requires a rationale, mission, strategy, objectives, tactics, and policies for action.
Industry Uses
Industry uses, also called light industries or assets and consumption, use as raw material products from heavy industries or from the primary sector, transforming them into products ready for use and consumption. They consume less energy and raw materials than heavy industries. They encompass a very diverse sector (food, textile, light chemical, etc.).
Industrial Area
An industrial area is a region or area in which the predominant economic activity is high, and most of its working population is engaged in this sector. Industrial regions need an abundant workforce, good communications, proximity to target markets and raw materials, and good telecommunication systems. In Spain, for example, the metropolitan areas of Madrid or Barcelona are large industrial sites that currently account for most of the country’s art industries.