Andalucía is unique within Europe for the diversity of its agricultural production. However, with the increasing encroachment of European policies taking precedent over domestic ones, how will the industry survive?

Despite the decline of the primary sector over the years, agriculture and forestry still remain the main land users in Europe, and rural areas account for 90% of the territorial mass and home to approximately half of the population, therefore playing a key role in the management of natural resources and socio-economic development.

Andalucía has a rich agricultural tradition, which began in 1000BC when the Pheonicians and Greeks started trading. By 206 BC, the area was in Roman hands and largely due to agriculture; Andalucía was one of the wealthiest parts of the Empire, which continued with the Moorish invaders who brought their cultivating skills.

The traditional shortcomings of Spanish agriculture are excessive land fragmentation where large tracts of land are in the hands of a few. A gradual change began in the 1950s, when prices rapidly increased and between 1960 and 1973, 1.8 million migrated to urban areas, and by the mid eighties, only 15% of the population were engaged in agricultural work as opposed to 42% twenty years earlier. However, this is still twice as high as the EC average, although it is becoming less of a way of life and more a way of simply making a living.

EC membership and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), was aimed at supporting each member state’s farming sector, but in Spain, opinion is still divided as to how it is affecting Spanish agriculture, where a domestic system of price supports had traditionally protected the weaker parts of the nations farm sector.

Following the oil crisis in 2000, which saw a marked increase in the price of petrol, the previous government gave subsidies to farmers, which the EU opposed. Spain must tow the European line, but arguably this has not always resulted in positive outcomes.

“Intensive olive farming is a major cause of one of the biggest environmental problems facing Europe today” said Elizabeth Guttenstein, WWF’s European Agriculture Policy Officer “Olive farming could be a model for environmentally and socially sustainable land use in the Mediterranean region. Instead EU subsidies for olive farming are driving the Mediterranean environment to ruin.”

Andalucía es única en Europa dada la diversidad de su producción agrícola. Sin embargo, con la creciente intrusión de las políticas europeas que se sobreponen a las nacionales ¿Qué posibilidades tiene la industria de sobrevivir?

A pesar del declive del sector primario a lo largo del tiempo, la agricultura todavía ocupa grandes extensiones en Europa, donde las zonas rurales alcanzan el 90% del territorio y albergan aproximadamente la mitad de la población, jugando así un importante papel en el control de los recursos naturales y el desarrollo socioeconómico.
La rica tradición agrícola de la región andaluza comienza aproximadamente en el año 1000 AC, cuando fenicios y griegos empiezan a desarrollar el comercio. Por el año 206 AC., la zona ya pertenecía a los romanos y estaba ampliamente dedicada a la agricultura. Andalucía fue una de las regiones más ricas del imperio y continuó siéndolo tras la invasión de los moros que introdujeron sus propias técnicas de cultivo.

Uno de los vicios tradicionales de la agricultura española es la excesiva fragmentación, por la que grandes extensiones de tierra están en manos de unos pocos. Con la subida de los precios, en la década de los 50, se empezó a producir un cambio gradual y entre 1960 y 1973, 1.800.000 personas emigraron a zonas urbanas. Ya a mediados de los años 80, sólo el 15% de la población se dedicaba a la agricultura, frente al 42% que lo hacía veinte años antes. Aún así, esta cantidad es el doble de la media europea, si bien la actividad agrícola supone cada vez menos un modo de vida, y más un recurso de sobre vivencia.

Los miembros del Consejo Europeo y la Política Agraria Común (PAC) tienen como objetivo apoyar al sector agrícola de cada estado miembro, pero en España, debido a la política proteccionista que beneficia a las partes más débiles del sector, hay todavía muchas voces divergentes acerca de cómo afecta la reforma a su producción.

Como consecuencia de la crisis que en el año 2000 elevó el precio del petróleo, el gobierno anterior concedió ayudas a los agricultores en contra de las disposiciones de la Unión Europea.

European reforms to cut the price of sugar, which will see prices drop by 20% next year and down by 33% in 2007 are also causing concern. Most European farmers do not want the reforms and in Malaga, the region that produces most of the sugar in Europe, job losses and factory closures are inevitable, and could even signal the end of the once thriving industry that stretched from Malaga to Nerja.

The way forward is sustainable agriculture that responds to economic, social and ecological challenges. Organic agriculture is increasingly taking hold of the conscience on the part of the consumer and has become one of the more dynamic agrarian sectors within the European Union. Organic growers in Andalucía are especially favoured for developing sustainable agriculture, thanks to educational programmes and the technical support of the Comité Andaluz de Agricultura Ecológica, the governing body for organic agriculture in Andalucía. In the last five years the sector has been strengthened by E. U. grants, with ever-increasing numbers of registered organic farms. The area of land farmed organically has increased from just over 2,000 Hectares in 1992 to 70,872 at the beginning of the century. However, for the traditional farmers, the new reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), could spell disaster. Geared towards consumers and taxpayers, ´single farm payments´ with criteria’s such as respecting the environment, food safety and animal welfare standards may sound laudable on paper, but severing the link between subsidies and production will inevitable make the market more competitive. Not surprisingly these reforms have not gone down well with Spain’s´ agricultural minister Elena Espinosa, who is fiercely opposed to reforming subsidies for tobacco, cotton and olive oil production. “This decision sends a strong signal to our farmers, consumers and taxpayers: Our new policy is geared towards a competitive, environmentally friendly and quality oriented farming sector”, says EU farm commissioner Franz Fischler “For Europe there is no way back. We are ploughing on with our reforms to make our farm policy less and less trade distorting”. What all this will mean in practice remains to be seen as the new reforms take effect. There is certainly growing widespread disillusionment amongst farmers in Andaluíca, where the future remains unclear and very much in the hands of the Government to fight their corner in Brussels.