Agricultural exports and economic development in Spain during the first wave of globalisation

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to study the evolution of Spanish agricultural exports, their share of agricultural production as a whole, the determinants of their expansion and, finally, the contribution that they have made to economic development. Our results show considerable dynamism in agricultural exports, which however faced certain obstacles that limited any further expansion. Their share on production varied greatly, but for some relevant products it was fundamental, substantially contributing to its growth. The increase in external demand but also the comparatively high profitability of export products and a high level of competitiveness in the international market generated highly dynamic behaviour in supply. The contribution of the export sector to Spanish economic growth was positive although moderate. It contributed to financing necessary imports during the industrialisation process, favoured a more efficient allocation of resources and produced intersectoral linkages. However, the geographical concentration of production for export limited its spatial impact on the Spanish economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural development
• agricultural trade
• Spanish economic history
• globalisation

JEL CODES:

• N53
• N73
• O13
• Q17

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editor of this issue, three anonymous referees, Pablo Castro, Domingo Gallego, Alfonso Herranz, Ramon Ramon and participants at the Rural History Conferences (Bern, 2013 and Paris, 2019) for their comments and help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the debate, see Iriarte & Pinilla (2019).

2 In this article we consider agricultural products (crop and animal production), and processed agrifood products (oil, wine, vegetable preserves … .)

3 For this calculation we have considered the period 1849 (first year for which there are data available in the Spanish foreign trade statistics) until 1928 (historical maximum of Spanish agricultural exports before the collapse of trade from 1929). We have chosen 1891 to divide the period into two as this is the year when a new tariff law gave rise to a clear shift towards protectionism.

4 It has been estimated that the elasticity of demand for oranges (the most important of the exported MHPs) with respect to income was 3.05 for the period 1854–1896 and 1.44 for the years 1896–1935 (Pinilla & Ayuda, 2008, p. 588).

5 The ratio of agricultural imports to production was similar, although slightly lower (Pinilla, 1995, p. 166; Gallego, 2001, p. 156).

6 Similarly, French wine exports between 1849 and 1938 were not driven by growth in the income per capita of their trading partners (Ayuda et al., 2019).

7 The lower price could also reflect a lower quality of Spanish oranges, understood principally as a lack of standardisation, insufficient maturing or the sale of frost-damaged fruit. These quality problems in external markets only arose in the mid 1920s as a consequence of the dramatic increase in exports and the favourable commercial opportunities (Font de Mora, 1938, pp. 301–2). Tena (1992) finds a slightly negative effect of the competitiveness of Spanish oranges between 1913 and 1928, due to a reduction in their relative prices on the international market. This would reflect that the huge growth in external demand not only translated into an increase in output but also in prices.

8 To make these calculations the blue water used has been taken, that is, the volume of surface or groundwater evaporating as a result of the production of a commodity (Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008).

Additional information

Funding

This study has received financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades of Spain, project PGC2018-095529-B-I00, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain, project PID2019-106822RB-I00 and from the Gobierno de Aragón, through the Research Groups, S40_20R and S55_20R and .