page_title: Andalusia
section_title: Agriculture, husbandry, hunting, and forestry
hierarchical_section_title: Andalusia / Economy / Primary sector / Agriculture, husbandry, hunting, and forestry
caption_attribution_description: Español: Imagen de una Dehesa en Bollullos Par del Condado (Huelva) Dehesa Boyal, en Bollullos Par del Condado (Huelva, España)
context_page_description: Andalusia region is the southern autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous, and the second largest autonomous community in the country. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville. Its capital is the city of Seville. The seat of the High Court of Justice of Andalusia is located in the city of Granada.
  Andalusia is located in the south of the Iberian peninsula, in southwestern Europe, immediately south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. Andalusia is the only European region with both Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines. The small British overseas territory of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian portion of the province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar.
context_section_description: For many centuries, agriculture dominated Andalusian society, and, with 44.3 percent of its territory cultivated and 8.4 percent of its workforce in agriculture as of 2016 it remains an integral part of Andalusia's economy. However, its importance is declining, like the primary and secondary sectors generally, as the service sector is increasingly taking over. The primary cultivation is dryland farming of cereals and sunflowers without artificial irrigation, especially in the vast countryside of the Guadalquivir valley and the high plains of Granada and Almería-with a considerably lesser and more geographically focused cultivation of barley and oats. Using irrigation, maize, cotton and rice are also grown on the banks of the Guadalquivir and Genil.
  The most important tree crops are olives, especially in the Subbetic regions of the provinces of Córdoba and Jáen, where irrigated olive orchards constitute a large component of agricultural output. There are extensive vineyards in various zones such as Jerez de la Frontera (sherry), Condado de Huelva, Montilla-Moriles and Málaga. Fruits—mainly citrus fruits—are grown near the banks of the Guadalquivir; almonds, which require far less water, are grown on the high plains of Granada and Almería.
  In monetary terms, by far the most productive and competitive agriculture in Andalusia is the intensive forced cultivation of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and other fruits grown under hothouse conditions under clear plastic, often in sandy zones, on the coasts, in Almería and Huelva.
  Organic farming has recently undergone rapid expansion in Andalusia, mainly for export to European markets but with increasing demand developing in Spain.
  Andalusia has a long tradition of animal husbandry and livestock farming, but it is now restricted mainly to mountain meadows, where there is less pressure from other potential uses. Andalusians have a long and colourful history of dog breeding that can be observed throughout the region today. The raising of livestock now plays a semi-marginal role in the Andalusian economy, constituting only 15 percent of the primary sector, half the number for Spain taken as a whole.
  "Extensive" raising of livestock grazes the animals on natural or cultivated pastures, whereas "intensive" raising of livestock is based in fodder rather than pasture. Although the productivity is higher than with extensive techniques, the economics are quite different. While intensive techniques now dominate in Europe and even in other regions of Spain, most of Andalusia's cattle, virtually all of its sheep and goats, and a good portion of its pigs are raised by extensive farming in mountain pastures. This includes the Black Iberian pigs that are the source of Jamón ibérico. Andalusia's native sheep and goats present a great economic opportunity in a Europe where animal products are generally in strong supply, but the sheep and goat meat, milk, and leather (and the products derived from these) are relatively scarce. Dogs are bred not just as companion animals, but also as herding animals used by goat and sheep herders.
  Hunting remains relatively important in Andalusia, but has largely lost its character as a means of obtaining food.
  It is now more of a leisure activity linked to the mountain areas and complementary to forestry and the raising of livestock. Dogs are frequently used as hunting companions to retrieve killed game.
  The Andalusian forests are important for their extent—50 percent of the territory of Andalusia—and for other less quantifiable environmental reasons, such as their value in preventing erosion, regulating the flow of water necessary for other flora and fauna. For these reasons, there is legislation in place to protect the Andalusian forests. The value of forest products as such constitutes only 2 percent of agricultural production. This comes mostly from cultivated species—eucalyptus in Huelva and poplar in Granada—as well as naturally occurring cork oak in the Sierra Morena.
caption: Dehesa Boyal (meadow for grazing animals), Bollullos Par del Condado, Huelva.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Digital Camera", "Image Make": "", "Image Software": "51", "Image ExifOffset": "154", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "498", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5255", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2002:01:01 10:10:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2002:01:01 10:10:00", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "19/2", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "MultiSpot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "991/100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "468"}