Abstract
Aim of study: To evaluate the changes in Spanish agricultural production since 1950s in a context of intense transformations in terms of the regional and crop composition.Area of study: Spanish provinces during the second half of the twentieth century.Material and methods: We use index decomposition analysis to evaluate the changes in the value and volume of crop production, as well as the role of product composition and the regional distribution of production.Main results: Spanish agriculture have focused on certain regions in the south or in the east of Spain. Some products like vegetables or fruits have a positive prices and composition effects, encouraging the production in these provinces.Research highlights: We found a ‘double concentration’: Spanish agriculture has increasingly tended to produce high value-added products, such as vegetables, fruit and olive oil. On the other hand, crop production is concentrated in the southern and eastern provinces of Spain.
Highlights
Agricultural production and productivity in Europe and their drivers have been among the main themes of agricultural economics (Hayami & Ruttan, 1985; Grigg, 1992; O’Brien & Prados, 1992; Federico, 2005; Lains & Pinilla, 2009; Alston & Pardey, 2014; Gollin et al, 2014)
We have analysed the structural changes in agricultural production in Spain during the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, in the framework of major transformations in the agricultural sector itself, as well as in the institutional and political context
We assessed how changes in the volume and price of production have conditioned the value of crop production in the long term
Summary
Agricultural production and productivity in Europe and their drivers have been among the main themes of agricultural economics (Hayami & Ruttan, 1985; Grigg, 1992; O’Brien & Prados, 1992; Federico, 2005; Lains & Pinilla, 2009; Alston & Pardey, 2014; Gollin et al, 2014). The case of Spain is striking for, among other reasons, its steady increase in agricultural production and productivity, especially during the second half of the twentieth century (Clar et al, 2016) Such continuous growth was not seen in other European countries, and since the 1980s agricultural production has stagnated (Martín-Retortillo & Pinilla, 2015). The technical innovations related to irrigation infrastructure allowed water to be supplied to arid regions: while the area of land irrigated more than doubled on the European continent generally, in Spain it almost tripled in the second half of the twentieth century This expansion was especially intensive during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the Franco dictatorship promoted the construction of dams as a pillar of its agrarian policy. Since the 1980s, with accession to the EEC and implementation of the CAP, this increase in production has been linked to international markets – especially in the case of those export products
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