Ernesto Clar

Contra la virtud de pedir… Barreras administrativas a la difusión de tractores en España, 1950–1960

The mechanization of the Spanish countryside after 1950 has been traditionally understood as a process of induced innovation, a result of rural exodus which put up the price of labour. For this same reason, this process it has been thought to take off only during the 1960s. This article highlights the importance in the incorporation of tractors already in the fifties, despite the existence of strong administrative barriers for their acquisition. In contrast to the significance usually given to the change in agricultural wages, this work emphasizes the negative trend in relative prices (partly due to the Franco’s regime price policy) as the principal stimulus for the Spanish mechanization during the decade of 1950.Nevertheless, the serious foreign difficulties of the Spanish economy hindered the purchase of tractors, subjecting it to an administrative complex network for the distribution of the equipment. This article explains such network, as well as the different capacity showed by the Spanish provinces, depending on the ability of actors and institutions to maneuver in that scenario. KEY Classification-JEL: N54, Q16, Q18

Path Dependence and the Modernisation of Agriculture: A Case Study of Aragon, 1955–85

This paper explains how technological developments and changes in production encouraged and drove the processes of agricultural modernisation that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, taking the region of Aragon in north eastern Spain as a case study. The main agricultural macro-variables reveal a surge in output, coincident with a far-reaching restructuring of production, in which livestock and animal feeds played a key role. The relative success of this high speed agricultural transformation was largely due to technological progress and the development of Aragons trade links before 1936. Meanwhile, the earlier development of irrigation schemes, the capitalisation of farms and experimentation with different seed varieties allowed the region to adapt quickly to the new Green Revolution technologies that came to the fore after 1950. At the same time, established trade links allowed a swift transition to livestock and related produce destined for fast developing agro-industrial regions, like Catalonia and Valencia. As in other countries, technological and trade path dependency also explain the polarisation of agricultural development within Aragon itself, and in particular the success of the provinces of Zaragoza and Huesca in contrast to failure and depopulation in Teruel. The experience of Aragon may thus be useful to understand the dynamics of other less developed regions currently in the throes of transformation.