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Texto reemplazado: «Labayru Fundazioa: fondo» por «Labayru Fundazioa: Fondo»
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=== Contents of the book ===
The workforce is also analysed, along with the importance of all the members of the family being involved in the agricultural work, regardless of their age or sex and neighbours working together. As regards the Mediterranean-facing side, the contracting of day workers is covered, particularly at harvest time, given the area involved and the speed at which the crops had to be gathered. The importance of animal power is also described, particularly at a time when the machinery as we know it today had still not appeared.
[[File:8.1_Faneuse_1896._Oleo_de_Emile_Claus.png|center|600px500px|Faneuse, 1896. Óleo de Émile Claus. Fuente: ''Émile Claus'' (1849-1924). Paris: Bibliothèque de l Image, 2013, p. 46.|class=nofilter]]
There is a chapter on animal transport, particularly the ox cart given the key role it played, along with the yoke and all the accessories needed to harness the pair of cattle. The last chapter in this block addresses the mechanisation of agriculture and the changes that modern machinery have meant to farming.
Given the age of the informants and that part of the information was gathered decades ago, we have focused on farming from the end of the 19th to the mid-20th century.
[[File:8.3_Laietan_Zeanurin_(B)_1920.png|center|600px|Laietan Zeanurin (B), 1920. Fuente: Archivo Fotográfico Labayru Fundazioa: fondo Fondo Felipe Manterola.]]
That farming was family-run, involved all members of the homestead regardless of their age or sex and focused on self-sufficiency or at least as far as it could.
That knowledge was not a rigid, but rather a permeable body of expertise, as the person who cultivated the land was always open to trying new seeds and even techniques, but from empiricism that meant checking that it worked. Despite the disdain shown by modern society, that knowledge was scientific to a certain extent as it was based on the technique of trial and error. Furthermore, it was accumulative as the knowledge gained by each generation was added to the received expertise and passed on to the following one. Thanks to this accumulated knowledge, each family also knew which part of its land was best for each type of crop.
[[File:8.5_Recolte_des_betteraves_fin_du_XIXe_siecle._Huile_d’Emile_Claus.png|center|600px|Récolte des betteraves, fin du XIXe siècle. Huile d’Émile Claus. Fuente: ''Émile Claus'' (1849-1924)''. Paris: Bibliothèque de l Image, 2013, p. 35.|class=nofilter]]
[[File:8.7_Desherbage_late_19th_century._Oil_painting_by_Emile_Claus.png|center|600px|Désherbage, late 19th century. Oil painting by Émile Claus. Fuente: ''Émile Claus'' (1849-1924)''. Paris: Bibliothèque de l Image, 2013, p. 43.|class=nofilter]]
This know-how came from the deep-rooted link that was established with the land. In the case of an economy based on self-sufficiency, there was no other option than to respect the land, as their very livelihood depended on it. In fact, unlike what happens today with agricultural fields, exposed to erosion and to the buildup of chemical waste, arable land in the past gradually improved with years of work and the best land was considered to be that which had been ploughed for generations.
Many of the holdings, particularly those that have to pay rent to lease land, would run at a loss without the CAP grants and a previously unknown situation of dependency has thus been created. The downside is the strict control of the farmer who has to comply with all the administrative red-tape or facing paying a fine. There is a huge difference between the relative freedom that farmers enjoyed in previous decades and the crop control of today, as practically all their activity is regulated.
[[File:8.6_Arracheuse_de_betteraves._Argandoña_(A)_2003.png|framecenter|600px|Arracheuse de betteraves. Argandoña (A), 2003. Fuente: Juan José Galdos, Grupos Etniker Euskalerria.]]
For example, farmers are currently required to leave part of their holding to fallow land or to use protein crops that add nitrogen to the ground, such as legumes, for which they receive a specific agri-environmental grant, on top of the general one for all crops. All the holdings of over 15 hectares have to earmark at least 5 % of the total to ecological focus areas: fallow, nitrogen-fixing crops, wooded areas and/or agroforestry. Furthermore, in order to diversify the crops, the CAP requires holdings under 30 hectares to plant at least two different crops, with the main crop occupying less than 75 % of the total; and holdings larger than three different crops with the two main ones occupying less than 95 % and the largest of them less than 75 % of the total.
In short, we live in times of far-reaching changes. The traditional agriculture described here, and which only remains in the memory of our elderly informants, has seen its day. An increasingly more intensive and industrialised professionalised agriculture, and which is very dependent on the economic and political vicissitudes from the land itself, will survive. Yet to judge from the movements that refuse to give up, it does not seem that this activity, this way of life, so closely linked to our history and to our territory, is going to totally disappear. This volume seeks to record that our rural folk and our ancestors knew and practiced agriculture on a more human scale and from a more holistic approach, where not only the yield is taken into account, but also the complex network of physical factors and human beings involved in an activity that, in short, is based on cultivating the life that feeds us.
{{DISPLAYTITLE: General remarks on agriculture}}{{#bookTitle:Agriculture in the Basque Country | Agricultura_en_vasconia/en}}