Rural Landscapes: Structure, Activities, and Transformations
The rural area is primarily undeveloped land, historically dedicated to agriculture, livestock farming, and forestry.
Physical and Human Factors
Environment
Relief
High altitudes and steep slopes can both facilitate and impede erosion and machining.
Climate
Characterized by low and erratic rainfall, frequent storms and hail, extreme temperatures (frost or intense sunlight), and varying degrees of aridity.
Soils
Poor quality soils often suffer from erosion, reducing fertility.
Agrarian Structure
Traditional Agriculture
Labor-intensive, large or small farms, extensive land use, backward technology, low yields, primarily for domestic consumption or markets protected by tariffs.
Current Agriculture
Sparse and aging population, increasing farm sizes, greater intensification (high yields from small areas).
Rural Population
Employment
The farming population is scarce and aging, especially in peninsular rural communities, due to rural exodus (1960-1975) driven by mechanization and urban opportunities.
Demographic Trends
Continued population decline and aging in disadvantaged rural areas due to negative natural growth, migration, retirement, and cessation of activity. Some recovery and rejuvenation in dynamic areas due to immigrant agricultural workers.
Farms
Land Division
Land is divided into plots (with imprecise boundaries) and farms (all plots worked by a single producer).
Recent Changes
Farm Size
Predominance of outliers and a shortage of medium-sized farms.
- Smallholdings: Common in the north and Valencia, sometimes part-time with low earnings, sometimes modern, profitable horticulture.
- Large Farms: Predominate in Extremadura, western Andalusia, and Castilla-La Mancha. Traditionally characterized by disinterested owners, low investment, extensive cultivation, low yields, and many laborers; some have become high-yield capitalist enterprises.
Tenure System
The degree of dominion over the land (full ownership or limited). Direct holding: Owner and operator are the same. Indirect holding: Owner grants land use for a share of the harvest (sharecropping) or rent (lease).
Agricultural Techniques and Systems
Technical changes include mechanization, genetic selection, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
Agricultural systems have intensified, increasing yields.
Rural Settlement and Habitat
Rural Settlement
Human settlements in rural areas. In Spain, municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are considered rural (semi-rural: 2,000-10,000).
Origins are linked to physical factors (water availability, relief) and economic factors (resource availability).
Typology:
- Dispersed: Houses are separated, surrounded by fields, meadows, or forests.
- Scattered: All houses are isolated.
- Interlayer: Scattered houses from original concentrated cores due to population growth and expansion.
- Loose Scattered: Small clusters of houses.
- Concentrated: Houses form villages.
- Linear: Houses along a path or road.
- Crowded: Houses clustered around an irregular nucleus.
Transformations
Inland: Settlement size reduced due to rural exodus in areas with limited access and resources.
Coast: Tourism-driven housing developments, hotels, and facilities encroach on rural space.
Peri-urban: Urban growth and economic development incorporate rural communities into the urban continuum.
Rural Habitat
Rural settlements and their structures.
- Materials:
- Stone houses: Irregular stones (masonry) or regular blocks, sometimes without cement or mortar.
- Wood frame houses: Visible wooden structure filled with mud or bricks.
- Adobe/Cob houses: Raw clay mixed with straw, sun-dried, molded (adobe) or placed between wooden panels (cob).
- Layout:
- Block-house: All units under one roof, single-story or with separate units for living, animals, or agriculture.
- Multi-story: Agricultural units on lower floors, living quarters above, attic space for storage.
- Courtyard house: Buildings arranged around an enclosed or open courtyard.
Recent Changes
Disappearance of traditional lifestyles and houses due to abandonment, destruction, or replacement by urban-style houses, especially in areas with tourism or second homes.
Livestock Activity
Traditional livestock farming involved multiple species in the same area; current breeding has changed significantly.
The farming structure and its recent transformations: Livestock tends to specialize in meat or milk production, often replacing native breeds.
Technology use is increasing (milking machines, scientific nutrition), leading to larger farms.
- Intensive livestock: Animals are housed and fed entirely with feed, often near consumption centers, using selected foreign breeds and modern techniques, with high dependence on imported fodder.
- Extensive livestock: Depends on the physical environment and grazing in meadows and pastures, using traditional, native breeds.
Livestock production: Forage crops contribute to soil conservation and improve living standards by providing protein from meat, milk, and eggs. Transformations are driven by market competition and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which imposes quotas, provides decoupled aid, and sets food safety standards.
Cattle
Meat and milk production, location varies with altitude and system. Extensive in the north, intensive near urban centers and fodder-producing areas. Meat faces competition from cheaper pork and poultry; milk faces competition from other EU countries. CAP maintains aid for slaughtering dairy cows and calves.
Sheep
: is intended for the production of meat and milk and the production of wool, its location are the drylands of the peninsular. The regimen includes extensive transhumance, or seasonal movement of livestock between winter pastures and summer, the intensive regimen of lambs and milking bait is increasing. meat production is based on native breeds, milk production has increased introduction of alien races, the PAC has given substantial grants to avoid abandonment of this activity. 50% of the aid is destined for production. pig breeding: are used for consumption and fresh charcinería the Procine extensive, based on indigenous breeds quality pastures of Extremadura and the intensive pig adopts the system of integration providing piglets and feed. production is increased due to increased demand. CAP does not provide minimum prices or direct payments. Livestock poultry: its location is in an intensive and under the integration system is concentrated in Catalonia. the extensive regime, chicken with outdoor access and lower density of birds. production of poultry meat consumption is lower, requiring import permits for egg production exported, the PAC helps the importation of meat and eggs and chicken meat removed from the market to prevent prices falling.
Forestry: Spain occupies 18.8 million hectares, the main species are the hardwoods and conifers, are for the sawmilling timber for use in the construction industries and furniture in the pulping of paper, esplota solvents and resin for cork stoppers and insulating areas are the northern peninsula and Soria and Huelva. The production increase by the expansion of fast growing species, the CAP and the Spanish Forestry Plan encourage afforestation and forestry, the objectives are to increase timber production and enhance other forest uses such as recreational environmental
Agricultural activities:was based on polyculture using backward techniques and extensive farming systems that occupied low yields. The farm structure and its transformations: – agriculture tends to specialize in the best products of each region. incorporate crop-modern techniques used selected seeds and GM crops, endowed with certain properties, use of pesticides and fertilizers, use of machinery (renewal is promoted more efficient machines), uses different techniques to overcome the constraints natural co padding that covers a layer of manure and an upper sand hydroponic culture that holds the root of plants with gravel and fed with solutions of inorganic salts. fallow land left to rest for a variable time, we must plow for that the better the water and eliminate weeds Siven of fertilizer for the soil, the surface of fallow receded, is distributed in Castilla-La Mancha and Aragon. advantages, allowing the natural break of the earth, but has the problem that reduces agricultural production in affected areas. Irrigated: providing water to crops additional to that provided by rainfall, irrigation by gravity, sprinkler or drip .- intensive irrigation: outdoors or in greenhouses, provide several crops per year are devoted to fruit and verduras.-Irrigated extensive: a single crop is devoted to these crops identical but with a much higher rendimeinto. the Surface area irrigated has seen a notable increase over the twentieth century, the National Irrigation Plan, created by the maintenance of irrigation networks and water conservation, are distributed in the Mediterranean coast intensive irrigation, with physical conditions and human, Interior peninsular, extensive irrigation water that brings the great rivers, the total machining allowing their crops and the growing demand for feed grain and industrial products. the benefits of irrigation in the economic, production stabilized after gaining independence from the cycles of drought and increasing yields. problems are the overexploitation of surface and groundwater. Agriculture: the transformations experienced by the different types of crops are due to the need to compete in European and world markets and the requirements of the CAP .- cereals: arable crops intended to human food and animal feed, production of compound feed and obtaining biocarburantes.áreas Cropping interior dryland peninsular, corn and water demanding rice production is facing higher yields elsewhere. the CAP imposed production quotas and a reduction of the surface, Founding crops. Pulses: arable crops for human consumption, beans, lentils … the growing area coincides with that of cereals, a crop is off, production faces difficulties in machining and low yields of PAC spends 75% of aid for chickpeas and lentils. The vine is a shrub of upland farming, for fresh consumption or wine, the area producer is Castilla-La Mancha, have low production yields, the CAP aims to reduce surpluses by implantcion of quotas, the abandonment of farming subsidy. Olivo: tree crop rainfed, drought-resistant summer, spends part of their harvest to table olives or oil production, producing areas: the Andalusian countryside, cordoba, extremadura. production is very variable, alternating good and bad harvests, production of olive oil is the largest of the world, high prices and low mechanization precios.la make up the PAC maintains production quotas.Hortofructícolas crops: are intended for fresh consumption or canning, are producing area irrigated peninsular and island, and secondarily humid drylands, is grown on the Mediterranean coast, is traditionally production for home consumption, increased with increasing level life, the CAP limits the production of these products to offset the market withdrawal to avoid falling prices. Industrial crops: they are intended for industrial processing such as sunflower, sugar beet, cotton and snuff. producing areas are the irrigated areas in the southern half of the peninsula, the production is related to the industry that farmers instructs and supervises and controls the production, the CAP has imposed quotas of production for these crops. Fodder crops: are intended to feed animals, growing areas are in the drylands of the northern half of the peninsula, by the humid climate, electricity production increased by demand for animal feed, the CAP has decoupled the aid of production.