Different considerations have been made about the evolution of the Spanish economy during the 17th century, in which the existence of a generalised and prolonged crisis in the Spain of the misnamed minor Habsburgs was acknowledged. However, during that period the number of active people did not fall, agricultural production had precisely to register a downward trend, where there was a “hidden unemployment” and the decrease in the cultivated area allowed the average quality of the cultivated land to improve and the breeding of livestock to expand. The price of meat increased during the first half of the 17th century. Taking the terms of trade of the 1570s as a reference point, the trajectory of the terms of trade is not so favourable for meat producers. The behaviour of relative prices was not a sufficient condition for the emergence of important stimuli to expand cattle breeding, since the growth in operating costs led to a decrease in profits. In this sense, the area of communal pastures, due to ploughing, deforestation, enclosures and vineyard plantations, fell sharply in the second half of the 16th century and, most probably, in the first third of the 18th century. This led, as contemporaries reported, to an intense upward movement in the price of herbs between 1550 and 1630. Given the high percentage of production costs, it is likely that the balance sheets of the herds tended to worsen. The demand for meat plummeted in Old Castile in the first half of the 17th century, due to the decline in population, the deep crisis in the cities and economic difficulties in general, and the rise in the price of meat is a testimony to the depression of the cattle ranching industry.
Collection: Statistics
Project: 2. Social and economic impact of technological revolutions in Europe., 3. Rural world and urban world in the formation of the European identity.
Chronology: XVII
Scope: Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, University
Resource type: Statistics
Format: Table
Source: Llopis Agelan, Enrique, «El agro castellano en el siglo XVII: ¿depresión o “reajustes y readaptaciones”?», Revista de Historia Económica, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 4, 1 (1986), pp. 11–37
Language: Spanish
Date: 1986
Owner: Álvaro Romero González (Modernalia)
Copyright: © Enrique Llopis Agelan, © Revista de Historia Económica
Abstract: Comparative price of wheat and meat in Golden Age Spain
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