Spanish Rural Landscapes: Agriculture, Livestock, and Regional Diversity
Several Spanish Rural Areas
The agricultural landscape is a combination of habitat and landscape, analyzing all from a descriptive perspective, i.e., the visible aspects, although it is preferable to talk about the agricultural area in which you want to add an analysis of socioeconomic issues (social system and technical factors). Various types of agricultural areas are: agriculture, rural-rural mixed, areas of regadio, rural area of Mediterranean agriculture, rural secano, mountain agriculture, forests, and grasslands.
Mixed Farming Rural Area
This is a space in which man lives in both rural agriculture and livestock. It took the Gaza coast and much of Galicia or huemda, also called Iberia. The oceanic climate and the altitude are high on average; 19% of the land is less than 200m above sea level. Deciduous forests and semi-natural grasslands predominate, which have essentially livestock conditions. Even cultures are complementary to livestock. The habitat is scattered with crops around the house, dominated by small farms, even microfundio. Cantabria fields are essentially closed. Asturias and livestock account for 15% of the national herd in cattle and somewhat more in the national production center of milk. In the Basque Country, rural life is the farmhouse, consisting of family housing as the farm that surrounds it, with which it forms a Galician agro unit. Subsistence mixed farming predominates, has a low contribution to GDP, and is based on cross-breeding of indigenous breeds with other populations.
Rural Area of Irrigated Areas
The settlement is grouped into small villages relatively close together. The properties are usually of medium size in which parcels are openfield or open. In both Castillas, industrial or fodder crops and vegetables are dedicated to irrigation. In Extremadura, the cultivation of snuff, rice, fruits, and vegetables is stressed. Citrus fruits are grown in Andalusia, Aragon, and industrial crops. Horticulture is oriented to citrus crops and vegetables in Valencia and Murcia. In Ontario, the cultivation of fruit is important. In the Balearic Islands, there are small areas of horticulture and irrigated crops. In the Canary Islands, sugar cane and bananas are early products for export (tomato and potato).
Rainfed Mediterranean Agricultural Rural Area
It occupies most of the territory of inland Spain and the Mediterranean coastline. It is the area of cereal and fallow open fields of livestock and extensiba settlement concentrated in large and remote nuclei. The population and smallholder plots tend to coincide with the proximity of rivers or important water sources.
The two Castillas are essentially cereal-growing, which stresses the trigo vines. The vines occupy a small extension in the northern sub-plateau; there are no other Mediterranean crops like olive trees. In the southern sub-plateau, the olive and the vine do occupy large areas. In southern Castilla y Leon and part of Extremadura, larger pastures are dominated. Agriculture is of little consequence in cereal and small gardens for the subsistence of workers. Livestock is extensive and is represented by the bull in Salamanca, beef cattle in Extremadura, and the Iberian pig in both. Sheep find their habitat in the Great Plains of La Mancha. The Andalusian farmhouse in Extremadura has a higher prevalence than the pasture farm but a smaller contribution to livestock and forestry. In Navarra, La Rioja, Aragon, and Catalonia, the upland is occupied by the Mediterranean trilogy: olive groves, vineyards, and cereals. In Valencia, Murcia, and the Balearic Islands, olive groves, vineyards, and almond trees are of great importance.
Mountain Space
Mountain agriculture is in decline. Climatic difficulties, relative isolation, and low productivity, both agricultural and livestock, make the mountain areas become depopulated. The habitat is concentrated in small villages located in valleys or on sunny slopes. The fields are closed smallholdings; small farms abound in terraces on the flanks. Predominantly subsistence mixed farming and livestock are often mixed to supplement the diet with meat and milk.
Dynamics of Rural Areas
Some of these changes are:
- Decline in the agrarian population.
- Decreasing number of farms, but an increase in the size of farms.
- Increasing number of farmers own their farms.
- Increasing rural tourism and hunting.
There are also some aspects that can be worrying for the future:
- Over-reliance on European Union subsidies that guarantee up to 2013.
- The trend of economic globalization since the creation of the World Trade Organization, which aims to open all markets to agricultural products from all countries and not only industrial ones.
- The trend to falling prices and the dwindling number of family farms that makes the number of farm-oriented societies governed purely and simply by the market and social character increase.