Portugal: Rural Landscape

No. 70 JANUARY 2017

Beginning with the Portuguese rural landscape between the 19th and 20th centuries, the changes throughout the 20th century are described in this essay, accompanying the move from closed organic economies to the open economies that characterise commercial agriculture. The central premise being that in closed economies food is not a choice but a consequence of what can be produced, the changes in diet and production are portrayed here as the driving forces behind the changing landscape. On every page of the book, we look at how the management of the other driving forces behind the construction of humanised landscapes – water, fertility and work – is linked with food and changes due to technological developments, especially the discovery of low-cost nitrogen production and mechanisation, in order to break down the essential links between agricultural production and animal production, which characterise closed organic economies. In addition, it refers to how changes in the landscape can be reflected in the dynamics of wild animal populations, using the changes in the wolf population as an example.