Cambios

The following descriptions begin with the cases of Álava and Navarra as agriculture has a greater presence and importance there.

Even though the landscape is flat, surface erosion has left small hillocks or mounds, but the remaining land is sedimentary flood plains that provide the best farming land.

The production is mainly rain-fed cereal crops, alternating with some forage plants, corn, broad beans, beans, potatoes and beetroot, with the latter benefitting from irrigation being introduced. In recent decades, some farmers have started to farm leafy vegetables intensively and on a large scale.

Navarra is home to a great variety of landscapes caused by the combination of ''ager, saltus'', habitat and paths, according to Alfredo Floristán, the geographer, reflecting how varied its relief, its climate and the different cultures to be found there are. There are therefore four main bioclimatic environments:

# ''Pyrenean valleys.'' In the uplands of north-eastern Navarra, there is a type of rural landscape whose most notable features are bioclimatic gradation, transhumance, rafts known as ''almadías'' to transport logs downriver and upland agriculture.

# ''Pre-Pyrenean Basins.'' Open fields with agricultural holdings of over 20 ha. and small villages straddle the Lumbier-Aoiz and Pamplona basins, in the southern part of the Pyrenean valleys and the northern part of the Zonea Media buffer zone, in other words, approximately throughout the bioclimatically Sub-Mediterranean Navarra. Nearly all the arable land is planted with barley and wheat each year.

# ''Mediterranean landscapes.'' This land in southern Navarra has been intensively worked ever since the Romans and Arabs in earliest times and according to aspects of its rainfall patterns: low annual amount, uneven month-on-month distribution of the rain and, particularly, dry summers.

The natural landscape has been defined as the synthetic expression of the geological and physiographical circumstances and conditions in a territory. However, the intervention of humans and animals has turned it into a humanised landscape.

The traditional crops of cereal (wheat and corn), turnip and beetroot have also decreased in importance to the point that some have even disappeared, such as wheat in the mid-20^th century. That land used for those crops is now being used as grazing land and the area used to grow forage and meadow plants has increased significantly. Back in the 1970s, it was already said that there was a significant shift towards livestock in the agriculture of Bizkaia. There has been an upturn in market gardening.

The relief and climate of Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia are similar, with both in the Atlantic area of the Basque Country and consequently, the landscape, the types of settlement and livelihoods have much in common. One noteworthy difference is that the geography of Gipuzkoa is much more rugged, as there are no plains in the series of mountains and valleys following on from each other. There are only some hollows of a certain size at specific places along the coast and at the foot of the dividing mountain ranges. The highest peaks form the southern boundary with the province of Álava and are, in turn, the watershed between the Atlantic and Mediterranean sides.

The main products obtained in the primary sector are: forage for the livestock, potatoes, leafy vegetables and corn. Getaria is particularly known for its vineyards. A recent trend is using greenhouses to grow vegetables and flowers.