La motorización de una agricultura atlántica y ganadera de pequeños propietarios: La difusión de tractores agrícolas en Galicia, 1939-2000

Abstract

The motorisation and diffusion of agricultural tractors has often been explained from neoclassical approaches as a technological change typical of large-scale, wage-labour, cereal-oriented agriculture. However, in this article we analyse the diffusion of tractors in an Atlantic smallholding agricultural system that involved livestock and family labour in Galicia from 1939 to 2000. From an evolutionary economics approach, we examine technological change with special attention to the institutional context, the supply of tractors during the Franco dictatorship, the transition to democracy and the early decades of democracy in Galicia and throughout Spain. The documentation for this work comes from various sources, including the Archivo General de la Administración (AGA), the Rexistro Oficial de Maquinaria Agrícola (ROMA) of the four Galician provinces, and informative literature from agricultural journals and machinery companies in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE). We also analysed innovation and motorisation from a peasant economy approach by doing fieldwork consisting of semi-directed, open-ended interviews and consulting provincial and municipal archives. The main results point to the supply factor as a crucial element in the diffusion of tractors in Galicia and Spain from the 1960s onwards. However, micro analysis based on the peasant economy reveals how the logics behind the adoption of technological changes did not necessarily align with increasing immediate economic benefits, but reflected other cultural considerations such as prestige or reducing the perception of self-exploitation in family work.