Juan Infante-Amate

The Spanish Transition to Industrial Metabolism: Long‐Term Material Flow Analysis (1860-2010)

The aim of this work is to reconstruct the main economy‐wide/material flow accounting indicators for the Spanish economy between 1860 and 2010. The main results indicate that from 1960 onward, the country saw a very rapid industrial transition based on the domestic extraction of quarry products and the import of fossil fuels and manufactured goods. Direct material consumption rose from 58.7 million tonnes (Mt) in 1860 to 570.2 Mt in 2010. In per capita terms, it rose from 2.76 tonnes per capita per year (t/cap/yr) to 11.61 t/cap/year. Of the decennial years studied in this article, a peak of 15.23 t/cap/yr occurs in the year 2000; the subsequent fall is explained by the crisis of 2008. Until 1930, Spain was a net exporter of resources, but since that year, and especially since 1960, it began to depend heavily on overseas resources. The physical trade balance per inhabitant in Spain was -0.01 t/cap/year in 1860 and today it is 2.45 t/cap/year. This process also reveals the change in consumption patterns, which became increasingly dependent on abiotic resources. In 1860, 98.1% of resources consumed was biomass, whereas today the figure is 16.2%. In all events, this article shows how, although the great transformation did not occur until 1960, before that date the country saw significant qualitative transformation, which did not involve relevant changes in the mobilization of resources.

Guidelines for Constructing Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Balances in Historical Agricultural Systems

Changes in cropland intensification and extension and their socioeconomic consequences have been a topic mainly investigated by agrarian historians. Results of the nutrient balances of these historical agricultural systems with relatively closed nutrient cycles might have played an important role because long-term sustainability only is achieved when the replacement of nutrients match those harvested. Thus, the analysis of the nutrient balance of specific historical agricultural systems or management practices has been the focus of agrarian historians. However, many of these nutrient balances have failed to take into account specific processes of importance. In this study, we provide a guideline for constructing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium balances in historical agroecosystems at both crop and aggregated scales. A rationale for explaining the processes involved and the variables that must be taken into account is provided. We also apply the model for specific crops at a parish scale using a case study from 1752. In addition, we provide the basis for linking a specific outcome of the nutrient balance with the long-term sustainability of specific crops.

Spanish agriculture from 1900 to 2008: a long-term perspective on agroecosystem energy from an agroecological approach

According to the agroecological approach, energy analyses applied to agriculture should provide information about the structure and functions of the agroecosystem; in other words, about the maintenance of its fund elements, which sustain the flow of ecosystem services. To this end, we have employed a methodological proposal that adds agroecological EROIs to the existing economic EROIs. This methodology is applied here for the first time at the country level, and over a long-term historical period. The Spanish agroforestry sector, which is representative of Mediterranean agroclimatic conditions, has been studied on a decadal basis from 1900 to 2008, fully spanning its process of industrialization and modernization. The results show the loss of energy efficiency brought about by the industrialization of Spanish agriculture. The economic EROIs (FEROI, EFEROI and IFEROI) fell by 42, 93 and 12%, respectively. The shift towards livestock production and the dramatic increase in industrial inputs are the causes of this decline. With regard to agroecological EROIs, NPPact EROI and Biodiversity EROI fell by 6 and 15%, respectively. This suggests that the fund elements are being degraded and alerts us to low returns to nature in the form of un-harvested biomass available to aboveground and underground wildlife. Finally, Woodening EROI increased by 48%. Sixty percentage of this increment was due to the growth of woodland in areas freed from agricultural activities. However, this change in land use was partly due to feed imports from third countries where deforestation processes may well be taking place, an effect that has not been considered in the analysis.

The Ecology and History of the Mediterranean Olive Grove: The Spanish Great Expansion, 1750 - 2000

This article argues that the landscape dominated by olive groves that is now seen as characteristic of southern Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the eighteenth, nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, olives were not an industrial crop, grown on a large scale for the production of oil. Instead, olive trees were largely grown by small peasant farmers and used to produce timber and fodder as well as foodstuffs, forming one component of a diverse peasant economy. This article will analyse the changing role of the olive within the landscape of the Spanish Mediterranean, and explore the process by which production moved towards single crop cultivation by large industrial enterprises.

A historical perspective on soil organic carbon in Mediterranean cropland (Spain, 1900–2008)

Soil organic carbon (SOC) management is key for soil fertility and for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, particularly in desertification-prone areas such as Mediterranean croplands. Industrialization and global change processes affect SOC dynamics in multiple, often opposing, ways. Here we present a detailed SOC balance in Spanish cropland from 1900 to 2008, as a model of a Mediterranean, industrialized agriculture. Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and soil C inputs were estimated based on yield and management data. Changes in SOC stocks were modeled using HSOC, a simple model with one inert and two active C pools, which combines RothC model parameters with humification coefficients. Crop yields increased by 227% during the studied period, but total C exported from the agroecosystem only increased by 73%, total NPP by 30%, and soil C inputs by 20%. There was a continued decline in SOC during the 20th century, and cropland SOC levels in 2008 were 17% below their 1933 peak. SOC trends were driven by historical changes in land uses, management practices and climate. Cropland expansion was the main driver of SOC loss until mid-20th century, followed by the decline in soil C inputs during the fast agricultural industrialization starting in the 1950s, which reduced harvest indices and weed biomass production, particularly in woody cropping systems. C inputs started recovering in the 1980s, mainly through increasing crop residue return. The upward trend in SOC mineralization rates was an increasingly important driver of SOC losses, triggered by irrigation expansion, soil cover loss and climate change-driven temperature rise.

The agrarian metabolism as a tool for assessing agrarian sustainability, and its application to Spanish agriculture (1960-2008)

Agrarian metabolism applies the social metabolism framework to agriculture. It focuses on the study of the exchange of material and energy flows between a society and its environment for producing useful biomass. These flows must maintain the fund elements of the agroecosystem in sufficient quantity and of sufficient quality for them to continue providing ecosystem services. This methodology was applied to Spanish agriculture between 1960 and 2008, a period characterized by a deep process of intensification based on external inputs (EIs). We specifically focused on nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), carbon (C), and energy flows, and on the three fund elements that they sustain such as soil, biodiversity, and woodland. The results show that the growing incorporation of EIs has broken the equilibrium between land and biomass uses required by traditional farming, lowering the density of internal energy loops. On cropland, the relative fall in unharvested biomass had a negative effect on both biodiversity and the soil, which reduced the replenishment of organic C between 1960 and 1990. The sharp increase in internal and external flows of biomass for animal feed hardly contributed to increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) between 1990 and 2008 because of the fact that these flows had increasingly lower C:N ratios. The massive importation of N in feed and mineral fertilizers (553 and 1150 Gg in 2000, respectively) increased the surplus and the losses of N, which in turn could have a negative impact on biodiversity, water, and the atmosphere. The scenario constructed without imported animal feed would allow a reduction in the environmental impacts related to the excess of N, with hardly any negative effect on SOC replenishment, and improving energy return rates in the form of total, unharvested, and accumulated phytomass.

The Making of Olive Landscapes in the South of Spain. A History of Continuous Expansion and Intensification

The objective of this work is to make an additional contribution that reveals new evidence about the nature of Mediterranean landscapes, their historical construction and the consequences of their transformation process. For this, we want to study the case of what is perhaps the most representative crop of the region: olive groves. The study area is the south of Spain which, for more than a century, has had the main concentration of olive trees in the Mediterranean and currently has the highest concentration of cultivated trees in the continent, with a continuous wood of more than 200 million trees. In the study period, between 1750 and 2010, we will outline the change in the social function of the crop, the management applied, the resulting landscapes and the socio-ecological consequences of the change. As we will see, historically, olive groves have not presented a constant image, but have changed from being a widespread crop, similar to exploitation systems such as dehesas and montados, to the industrial monoculture that they are today. The reconstruction of the geography of their expansion and the change in the morphology of olive grove landscapes and its causes, enable us to rebuild one of the most representative fragments of traditional Mediterranean landscapes, the olive groves of the south of Spain, and, with it, to participate in some of the debates that still persist about this matter.

Reconciling Boserup with Malthus: Agrarian Change and Soil Degradation in Olive Orchards in Spain (1750–2000)

Soil degradation is one of the consequences of farming activity that has had the greatest impact on the capacity of agro ecosystems to produce food and offer environmental services. This risk is threatening the Mediterranean basin as one of the principal factors of non-sustainability. In recent decades, the expansion of olive growing has exacerbated the problem in the Mediterranean region. Although the natural phenomena responsible for the process of soil degradation seem clear, debate remains regarding its social causes. The primary objective of this chapter, based on the evidence of severe degradation of Mediterranean soils, is to analyse its historic dimension through a case study performed in a mountainous area of southern Spain (Montefrio, Granada), in which to identify the causes and thereby contribute to the on-going debate regarding management approaches and soil degradation on a global scale, where the work of Boserup has been so influential. Our case study, which spans two and a half centuries (1750-present day), examines whether population growth was among the primary factors in the transformation from pre-industrialised to industrialised agriculture, with its consequent environmental impacts. In the light of the transition towards sustainable agriculture, understanding the vital role played by population size and dynamics is crucial, especially if approached on a global scale, given that the population of the planet is constantly growing.