Manuel González de Molina

Environmental constraints on agricultural growth in 19th century granada (Southern Spain)

Historians and economists have been unaware of environmental constraints and they have considered the low yield per hectare of the main cereals to be an indication of the relative backwardness of Southern Spanish agriculture. This paper proposes a methodology of analysis that integrates environmental and economic variables to explain the differences in crop productivity between Southern Spain and northern Europe in the 19th century. Here, the relative backwardness will be explained not only by deficiencies in productivity, capital investment or diffusion of new technology, but principally by the comparatie ecological disadantages that areas such as Andalusia had in comparison with Northern Europe, if an agricultural growth based on cereals was to be chosen.

The Onset of the English Agricultural Revolution: Climate Factors and Soil Nutrients

The English Agricultural Revolution began during a period of climate change in which temperatures decreased significantly. Lower temperatures meant less bacterial activity, a slower release of mineral nitrogen into cultivated soils, and a shorter growing season for crops—a combination that tended to diminish yields. The English farmers reacted by increasing the flow of organic matter and manure into the soil, thus mitigating the negative effect of the colder temperatures to some extent. When the temperatures rose again, the faster mineralization of soil organic matter led to bountiful yields that encouraged English farmers to continue with these innovative strategies. The upshot is that the English agricultural revolution was more a discovery than an invention, that the English agricultural revolution was more a discovery than an invention, induced by a combination of climate challenges, social and institutional settings, and market incentives.

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.

Nutrient Balances and Management of Soil Fertility Prior to the Arrival of Chemical Fertilizers in Andalusia, Southern Spain

Studies on the role of nutrient balances in the socioecological transition of agriculture are scarce, particularly in the Mediterranean region where manure availability was low. The role of nutrient balance in this transition was evaluated in three representative localities of the inland Mediterranean region of southern Spain from 1750 to 1900. Changes in cropland distribution, population, manure availability and demand, and nutrient balance at cropland and aggregated scales were assessed. Data suggest that agriculture development around 1750 was limited by manpower. During this period manure availability was higher than demand and municipal balances for nitrogen were positive, whereas they were slightly negative for phosphorus and potassium. During the 19th century, the population increased while livestock numbers and manure availability decreased. Nutrient balances become negative at crop and aggregate scales, indicating that productivity was based on soil mining. This territorial imbalance and soil mining were the main reasons behind the turn-of-the-century crisis which led to the agrarian socioecological transition.

Small-Caliber Lead Failure After Generator Exchange.

The Sprint Fidelis defibrillator lead (Medtronic) was recalled in 2007 due to an increased risk of failure. The generator exchange (GE) procedure has been associated with the development of Fidelis lead dysfunction. The aim of this study was to compare the rate of dysfunction between Sprint Fidelis and other defibrillator leads during the first year after GE.

Methodological Challenges and General Criteria for Assessing and Designing Local Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: A Socio-Ecological Approach at Landscape Level

Agri-food systems are sustainable when they can meet human needs while maintaining the basic funds and ecosystem services of agoecosystems and cultural landscapes in both a reproducible way and a healthy ecological state, at local, regional and global scales. This axiological definition involves a large research agenda to explore the operative criteria and indicators needed to know how to achieve this goal. It has to be a transdisciplinary research, capable of linking some of the already existing methodologies, like Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA), Material and Energy Flow Accounting of Social Metabolism (MEFA), Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), Agroecology, Landscape Ecology, Political Ecology and valuation of site-specific Biocultural Heritages of Peasant Knowledge. We will examine these approaches and the accounting methods, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, so as to combine them in innovative ways within a common framework focused on the interactive relations among societal and ecological metabolisms. To do so in a non-eclectic manner requires an agroecological perspective when accounting energy and material flows of farm systems, linking them with landscape ecology patterns and processes which sustain farm-associated biodiversity and derived ecosystem services, and adopting at all times an environmental history standpoint.