Agricultural exploitation

The exploitation of agriculture is the technical-economic unit of the base of the primary sector, equivalent to the company in other economic sectors, and whose production is agricultural products (agricultural or livestock).

Other companies in the primary sector

There are other companies in the primary sector, but their activity is usually based on marketing or agro-industry, sometimes through the association of farms for these purposes (agricultural cooperatives). On the other hand, there are also other non-agricultural activities in the primary sector (fishing and forestry), in which fishing and logging should be mentioned.

Concepts in relation to what is explained

As a concept, agrarian exploitation is related to and opposed to the concept of agricultural property and the concept of plot: a farm can encompass one or several plots, continuous or not, belonging to the same owner or to different owners, through direct exploitation (in which the owner coincides with the person responsible for the exploitation) or indirect exploitation (leasing or similar forms of assignment of land use). Work on the farm can be carried out by wage earners (day laborers) hired by the person in charge of it, or by the person responsible for it, or by the person responsible for it and their family ( family farm ); and depending on the size of the farm and the need for continuity in its care, there may be part-time farms (in which the person in charge of the farm spends seasons working in another sector and returns to his farm for the harvest or another season of higher intensity of work).

Size: latifundio and minifundio

Agricultural holdings, depending on their size, can be latifundios, if they are too large (those that exceed 100 hectares are considered that way in Spain) or minifundios, if they are too small (10 hectares in Spain); although, depending on the quality of the land and its location, a farm of less than 10 hectares may be perfectly viable (for example, an orange grove in the Valencian orchard). Although in most cases it tends to do so, a large property does not always coincide with a large estate, nor a small property with a minifundio: the large property can be divided into assignments of use for its cultivation to many small farmers in multiple indirect farms of the size of smallholdings; while a plurality of small properties can be managed by a single tenant, whose exploitation is a true latifundio. However, both extremes tend to become obsolete and tend not to be functional. In addition, they have different economic, social and political consequences (absentee owner, caciquismo, rural backwardness, rural exodus, agrarian conflict). Imbalances have led, in all countries, to technical (land consolidation) and political agrarian reforms (properly called agrarian reform, which implies changes in the property structure, usually linked to revolutionary processes -for example, the Mexican revolution-)..

Farms around the world

There are 525 million farms in the world (one for every 12 inhabitants). Of all of them, only 79 million (15%) exceed two hectares. Of the remaining 446 million, 388 million are in Asia and 36 million in Africa. The possibility of managing such small farms is practically reduced to a very precarious self-sufficiency typical of subsistence agriculture, making it very difficult to introduce it into market or technical agriculture (mechanization, irrigation, phytosanitary products, seed selection, marketing, specialization, etc.). change of crops according to demand, etc.); and even, paradoxically, it is usually incompatible with the most recent organic farming techniques (no-till farming, extensive farming, extension of fallow, crop association), despite the fact that they are usually inspired by the recovery of techniques typical of agriculture. traditional.

By countries

Spain

The Spanish regulations configure three computer tools called to be decisive in the management of agricultural exploitations:

• First, the SIEX, which is a set of databases and interconnected administrative records in which they integrate ex officio (without the need for the owners of the respective cattle farms or related companies to perform any additional performance), the data that consist of records, systems and bases such as the General Register of Livestock Exploitations (REGA), the National Register of Producer Organizations and Associations,
• Secondly, the REA (Registration of Agricultural Exploitations) is an electronic register, established and managed by the Autonomous Communities, in which "information on agricultural farms in the possession of the Administration will be integrated on an ex officio basis. It is the interested who fulfill such obligations, which are subsequently grouped by the Autonomous Administration in the REA.
• Thirdly, the Cuaderno de explotación (CUE), is an electronic system in which landholders with agricultural production units must record their agricultural activity data, according to certain technical requirements.