Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 16.00 - 17.15
P-8 RUR04 Agricultural and Food Policy, Technology, and Emigration in Spanish Agriculture
P
Network: Rural Chair: Ray Hurt
Organizer: Ray Hurt Discussants: -
Roberta Biasillo : Fascist Plants in the Colonial Space (Italian Libya, 1922-1943)
The dissemination of edible seeds, the exports of agricultural practises and the transfer of population represented the base for the colonization of Libya during the fascist regime. During the early 1920s, the costal regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were deemed to be “a vast sandy box” but its remote past ... (Show more)
The dissemination of edible seeds, the exports of agricultural practises and the transfer of population represented the base for the colonization of Libya during the fascist regime. During the early 1920s, the costal regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were deemed to be “a vast sandy box” but its remote past spoke about its hidden fertility and its near future envisioned a green colony. North Africa embodied indeed an ideal setting for creating purely fascist communities and landscapes through small and medium size farming schemes and in the late 1930s officially joined the Italian Kingdom.
This paper will unfold the development of part of the colonial fascist agenda in Libya and explore the mutual construction of fascist regime and Libyan environment. To implement that, it will use as entry points three ecological elements: almond and olive trees, which were considered pioneer plants and the first species able to tame and reclaim the soil, and wheat, a cereal suitable for fertile soils and symbol of the conquest of the African desert.
This historical case study poses the question of under what conditions agrarian, human, and cultural reclamation can be carried out and to what extend it could be sustainable. (Show less)

Suzanne Dunai : ’For Country, Bread, and Justice’: making Bread and Fascist Foodways in Francoist Spain, 1937-1951
During the Spanish Civil War, Caudillo Francisco Franco garnered support throughout the Spanish countryside with his military campaign slogans, “For country! Bread! Justice!” And, “wood in every home and bread for every Spaniard”. But the reality of rebuilding a war-torn Spain proved to be a difficult task, and the dictator’s ... (Show more)
During the Spanish Civil War, Caudillo Francisco Franco garnered support throughout the Spanish countryside with his military campaign slogans, “For country! Bread! Justice!” And, “wood in every home and bread for every Spaniard”. But the reality of rebuilding a war-torn Spain proved to be a difficult task, and the dictator’s promises of bread were never realized for many Spaniards during a famine remembered as “the hunger years”. Bread has long been an essential component of the Mediterranean diet, and its centrality to culture is reinforced by religion, cuisine, and popular customs. The Nationalists and subsequent regime sought to control bread, both materially and symbolically, in order to coerce and repress the population to the dictator’s fascist will. Spanish foodways in the postwar were restructured by the Franco regime to embed fascist doctrine into bread at every step of the production process. My paper analyzes the foodway that bread traveled from farm to table during the early Franco dictatorship, and how the regime embedded ideological significance to the commodity throughout the supply chain. My paper also addresses the breakdown of the bread supply to adequately feed the Spanish population, alluding to a breakdown in the indoctrination process that Spaniards failed to internalize through the consumption of postwar bread.

With the adoption of autarky, or extreme government intervention into food production and the economy, Franco’s control of bread was consolidated. The regime provided military escort to wheat and bread as the foodstuff traveled from farm to market. Consumers could only buy bread at official dispensaries and in fixed quantities. Spaniards who attempted to make their own bread faced fines or prison for subverting state control of the commodity. The physical regulation of bread and its consumption was intended to subdue the population and coerce Spaniards to fascist expectations for society. From the ideological side, I draw from Arjun Appadurai, Kathleen LeBasco, and Peter Naccarato to examine how the materiality of bread came to symbolize sustenance, family, and religiosity within Spanish society. From the harvesting of the fields to the shape, color, and texture of the goods sold in dispensaries, the paper demonstrates that each step in the process of making bread reinforced the policies and ideologies of the Francoist state.

Yet, from a material standpoint, the Franco regime failed to adequately control the bread supply during the hunger years. The black market flourished as women feigned pregnancy to transport sacks of flour, they shared recipes for making bread at home, and Spanish women in positions of authority often syphoned bread from the official dispensaries to friends and family in need. From an ideological standpoint, I interpret this breakdown in the food supply to correspond to a breakdown in the propagandistic meaning of bread that the fascist regime intended to control. Although the regime attempted to embed bread with religious and national ideology, an investigation into the practice of everyday life demonstrates the historical agency of Spaniards to consume their daily bread on their own terms. (Show less)

Bruno Esperante Paramos, Lourenzo Fernández Prieto : Technology and Industrial Farming in Rural Galicia 1959-1986.
This paper will analyze technological changes in rural Galicia. We focus on the adoption of tractors by dairy farming and analyze their role in the transformation in small-scale family farmers to producers on an industrial scale. Special, emphasis will be given to identifying the social profiles of adopters and ... (Show more)
This paper will analyze technological changes in rural Galicia. We focus on the adoption of tractors by dairy farming and analyze their role in the transformation in small-scale family farmers to producers on an industrial scale. Special, emphasis will be given to identifying the social profiles of adopters and their strategies for the incorporation of new technology in their dairy farming operations. This paper will show how technological change can be important to cultural transformations. In Spanish agriculture and agribusiness. (Show less)

Juan Pan-Montojo : Rural Development: the Reception of a New Political Paradigm for Spanish Agriculture in the 1960s
At the beginning of the 1960s, a new concept that entailed a new look at agricultural policies started to be used in Spain: rural development. Its introduction, that would lead in 1971 to the merging of all official institutions that dealt with rural structures into the new IRYDA (Institute for ... (Show more)
At the beginning of the 1960s, a new concept that entailed a new look at agricultural policies started to be used in Spain: rural development. Its introduction, that would lead in 1971 to the merging of all official institutions that dealt with rural structures into the new IRYDA (Institute for agrarian reform and development), took place in the context of a renovation of the theories of economic development at an international level: The Spanish path in this field cannot be separated from the Latin American one. This text will describe the chronology of the use of the term, its implication in political terms, and how it contributed to change the State action in the countryside in the final years of the Francoist regime. (Show less)



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