How farmers adopt new technologies: connections between farmer and technician knowledges in Galicia (NW Iberian Peninsula) (1880–1940)

RESEARCH ARTICLE How farmers adopt new technologies: connections between farmer and technician knowledges in Galicia (NW Iberian Peninsula) (1880–1940) Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto1, David Soto-Fernández2and Bruno Esperante3* 1University of Santiago de Compostela, History, CISPAC, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia-Spain, 2University of Santiago de Compostela, Applied Economics, CISPAC, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia-Spain and 3University of Barcelona, Economic History, Institutions, Politics and World Economy, Barcelona, Catalonia-Spain *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Abstract Who chooses new technology? And how? In this article, we explore the diffusion of agricultural science and technology in Galicia (Spain), and the ways in which farmers adopted innovations in the period of 1880– 1940 within the Atlantic Iberian agricultural context of small farms. To answer these questions, we adopt a socio-institutional approach and also an environmental one, changes in breeding techniques and the creation of the Galician Blond cow, as well as the widespread use of threshing machines, which were two closely related innovations in the context of mixed farming agriculture. These two examples illustrate the fusion of science-based and practice-based agriculture, and how technology did not threaten community or family equilibrium; instead, it empowered processes that were already operative in affirming small-scale farming. Introduction Who chooses new technology? In this article, we explore the diffusion of agricultural science and technology in Galicia (NW Iberian peninsula) and the ways in which farmers adopted innovations from 1880–1940 within the Atlantic Iberian agricultural context of small farms. We study two cases in particular: (1) the creation of a new cattle breed, the ‘Galician Blond’and (2) the adoption and diffusion of threshing machines. Who benefited from these technological choices? We focus on innovations, actors, and beneficiaries. Clearly, farmers, technicians, the state, companies, and rural elites had different interests and roles during this historical process. We explore how farmers were able to discover, choose and adopt new technologies from the second wave of industrialisation. This is the main question we have asked ourselves for the period in question, a time in which we try to show that there was a singular and extended model of innovation in small-scale European agriculture involving farmers themselves, new state innovation systems and markets. We focus on innovation as a social and networked process, as is proposed from the philosophy of science where scientists only create reference systems (Laotur, 2001). We consider the construction of new rural knowledge as a communicative action, overcoming the neoclassical cost-benefit approach, the concept of two cultures, and the diffusionist model. We especially discuss the strictly economistic interpretations of agrarian technical change that deny any capacity for endogenous social and peasant agency (Swolo, 1957; Schultz, 1964; Federico, 2005). Our approach is fundamentally indebted to Olson (1971), Scott (1987), and Thompson (1993) to understand the rationality, action, and resistance of peasant communities. As in Actor Network Theory (hereafter © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is used to distribute the re-used or adapted article and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use. Rural History (2024), 35, 152–169 doi:10.1017/S0956793323000043 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, ANT), we share the intention of entering the black box of technological change, in Rosenberg’s sense (1994) of overcoming the classic Shumpeterian orientation of the entrepreneur as an individual actor and old-fashioned economic theory about the invention as a finished product. On the contrary, we will look for the connections between different actors and understand the knowledge in the rural world and the transformation for scientists, farmers, and other actors. As Iturra (1993) shows, or more recently in Jones (2016), and in a practical way O‘Flynn et al. (2018), we identify and recognise the knowledge of farmers and the pitfalls of not recognising it. We address innovation from a farmer’s point of view, considering how long-term peasant knowledge was applied to agrarian systems and to the evolution of agroecosystems in terms of productivity and sustainability. Thus, we are also interested in the approaches of Fitzgerald (2003), Hartwood (2013), as well as Burton (2019), who rightly points out that on-farm demonstration was an important component of contemporary agricultural knowledge systems, but little is known about its origins or drivers. Our hypothesis is that the adoption of specific innovations by farmers (genetics, machinery, chemical) is linked not only with state diffusion efforts but with the accuracy of these techniques and with the way in which people had managed the agroecosystem in previous centuries. However, it is true that these innovations were not without limitations, opposition, and resistance. Despite this, these resistances inform us rather of the logic of peasant family production and reproduction (Fitzgerald, 2003; Barca, 2020). This research also aims to show that some limitations, such as price, were easy to overcome. However, much more difficult to overcome was the inadequate fit in the organisation of family work, or the social cost of ridicule or innovative failure. Precisely, to overcome these social effects, we will see how scientific, commercial and peasant networks worked. In this framework, we propose a case of study focused on Galicia to illustrate how the intensification process took place in the context of mixed farming Atlantic agriculture. Furthermore, this case demonstrates how innovations adopted in the twentieth century were linked to previous changes in crop rotations introduced by the mixed farming system since the eighteenth century. We connect scientific technological innovations in the long term, which resulted in the development of the mixed farming system throughout different regions of Europe (Bouhier, 1979; Villares, 1982; Fernández-Prieto, 1992). However, mixed farming had its own limits, mainly related to nutrient availability for soil. Consequently, the whole process of intensification, combined with other factors that we will not examine in this article, triggered a process of socioecological transition (Soto-Fernández, 2006; Corbacho, 2017). In this article we analyse, first, the construction of mixed agriculture since the eighteenth century. Secondly, we analyse, in the 1880–1936 framework, the construction of the modern Spanish system of agricultural innovation in Galicia. We lay out three innovation networks: scientific, the market, and the peasant unions. Third, we analyse two cases of innovation (animal genetics and agricultural machinery). Finally, we analyse the actors of innovation in a specific agricultural region, rather than in the innovation system, and their capacity to transfer technology. We propose to explain how the production, diffusion and transfer process occurred in a specific region. We expect to identify and explore how knowledge networks work and how farmers interact with scientists and the market. In doing so, we will access the black box of rural knowledge. 1. The beginnings of mixed farming and farming innovation (1750–1880) The increases in the productivity of Galician agriculture during the nineteenth century reflect the spread of new techniques. We will briefly describe changes in crop rotations, and the management of organic fertility during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (the First Agricultural Revolution). For this purpose, we will introduce the cases of two municipalities that show two Rural History 153 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, patterns of intensification in Galicia in that period: Ribadavia and A Fonsagrada (see Figure 1). Ribadavia is a case of intensification through market-oriented specialisation in vineyards, whereas A Fonsagrada is a more extensive model mainly aimed at self-sufficiency. Both cases exemplify the innovations that farmers developed to achieve a more productive agriculture. The case studies of Ribadavia and A Fonsagrada illustrate how the innovations of the First Agricultural Revolution developed in Galicia, a region of Atlantic agriculture in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. These cases exemplify the process of agricultural intensification in the countryside from the middle of the eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. We have used fiscal sources such as cadastres and land registries and have analysed changes in crops and rotations as well as productivity and fertiliser availability (Corbacho, 2017). Intensification in this region differs from other processes across the Peninsula, namely from those that have been studied in Andalusia and Catalonia (Mediterranean territories), where rotations are not as intense as the ones described in this article, and water is also a very important limiting factor (González de Molina et al., 2010). One key element for agrarian intensification is fertiliser, which conditions the possibilities and limits of this process. When dealing with an Atlantic agriculture such as that of Galicia, we need to talk about monte (scrubland) since that is the area that provides cropland with nutrients. In this case, shrub is mostly composed of gorse (Ulex Europaeus), a leguminous plant that was once planted on monte surfaces throughout the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was used as bedding for animals in stables, where it fermented along with their excreta and produced highquality manure. Gorse was also used as green manure in certain cases or even to feed cows, in the case of tender, young gorse. Different types of shrubs were collected along with gorse, but this plant was the main protagonist in the intensification pattern that agriculture followed in this region due to its high nitrogen content (Iglesias Pérez, 1985). In the 1960s around 75 per cent of the agrarian surface of Galicia was composed of scrubland, which provided the remaining 25 per cent of cropland with the required nutrients (Bohuier, 1979). Although this ratio might have been different in previous centuries, it illustrates the dependence on a large part of the territory in order for nutrients to be replenished in cultivated soils. This dependence has therefore conditioned peasants’decision-making processes all through the period Figure 1. Location of Galicia (in red) in Western Europe. Location of A Fonsagrada and Ribadavia in Galicia. Source: Prepared by the authors. 154 Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, David Soto-Fernández and Bruno Esperante available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, of study. The case studies of Ribadavia and A Fonsagrada allow us to take a closer look at these determinants. 1.1. Intensification through specialisation in Ribadavia Ribadavia is the capital of the Ribeiro region, in the inner province of Ourense. The municipality has a surface of 25 km2and is located at the edge of the continental climate region. Ribeiro benefits from a southern position with less rainfall and higher average temperatures than the rest of Galicia. Winters are cold and droughts are quite common in summer. This weather is very appropriate for vineyard cultivation, one of the most important crops in the Ribeiro region, where southern-oriented slopes were terraced to avoid soil erosion and provide grapes with the most convenient sun exposure. In 1752, apart from wine, the main crops in Ribadavia are millet, rye, and flax. The first quality soil is cultivated in a two-year rotation, whereas the second and third types of soil are left to lie fallow for the second year. By 1860, maize, beans and wheat have been introduced in a more intense rotation and fallow has been eliminated. The mixed farming system has started to spread in the region. By 1888 wheat has also been eliminated but the rest of the rotations remain the same. These changes are summarised in Table 1. Such adaptations in the management of rotations enabled productivity to increase, as we can see in Figure 2. The production of cereal in first quality soil rises from about 3,800 kilograms of dry matter per hectare and year to 7,500, and similar increases occur in soils of second and third quality as well. This process was intentionally driven in order to meet the dietary needs of the region’s growing population and the livestock that would provide crops with manure. But this increase had a limit, which starts to constrain this intensification process towards the end of the nineteenth century. The resulting stagnation involves not only a decline in yields in the more intensive rotations, but also in less demanding ones: wheat disappears from Soil Type 2 and only non-irrigated rye remains in the third type, which shows a relative increase in productivity due to its historically less intensive cultivation. The vineyards show the same trend in productivity as cereal, but with one peculiarity that aggravates the stagnation of intensification towards the end of the century. After the 1850s, grapevines start to be affected by oidium, a fungus from America that reaches Europe in 1845; towards the end of century, they are affected by mildew and phylloxera as well (Domínguez Castro, 1995). The main consequences are that fertilisation could not be replenished within the boundaries of the Table 1. Ribadavia: changes in cereal rotations (1752–1888) Ribadavia 1752 1860 1888 Cereal Rotations 1st year 2nd year 1 year, irrigated 1 year, irrigated Soil Type* 1 Summer crops millet millet maize and beans maize and beans Winter crops flax rye green fodder** green fodder** Soil Type 2 Summer crops millet ––– Winter crops flax –wheat – Soil Type 3 Summer crops –––– Winter crops rye –rye rye Note:*Soil Type refers to the quality of the soil, which is distinguished in fiscal documents according to productivity in order to set proportional taxation. **Green fodder: cereal and legumes collected before drying so that they can be stocked and used as feedstuff for livestock during winter.Source: (Corbacho, 2017). Rural History 155 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, valley where Ribadavia is located, thus breaking the nutrient cycle, and that the dietary needs of the population could not be met with local production. The case of Ribadavia thus shows that the limits to both intensification and specialisation were in the shrubland zones, which from at least the mid-nineteenth century could no longer supply cropland with the necessary nutrients. In addition, the fact that most cropland surface was cultivated with grapevines left Ribadavia’s population with insufficient food production. However, wine exportation provided the population with money to buy the nutrients that had to be imported into the agroecosystem, both for the soils and for society and livestock. Wine specialisation is highly market-oriented in the Ribeiro region, which exported wine to France and England as far back as the fifteenth century (Huetz de Lemps, 1967). Therefore, this marketoriented production is simultaneously the cause and the solution to nutrient scarcity, thus closing the vicious circle that broke the nutrient cycle in the agroecosystem and triggered the exportation of unsustainability to other nearby regions that had to provide Ribadavia with nutrients. This implies that Ribadavia subordinated surrounding economies to its market-oriented agriculture, the former being a case of a bourgeois medium-property system, and the latter a peasant smallholding economy. 1.2. Intensification through livestock in A Fonsagrada A Fonsagrada, in the inner region of the province of Lugo, is a much bigger municipality (443 km2) and has a completely different form of agriculture. The market does not play such an important role as in Ribadavia, and production is mainly intended for self-sufficiency. Cereal is the main crop, namely rye, and intensification here involves the introduction of potatoes and turnips and the expansion of cropland, especially pastureland, at the expense of shrubland area. This allowed productivity to increase, albeit with a trend towards stagnation at the end of the nineteenth century, as in Ribadavia. This can be seen in Figure 3. The increase in cultivated surface and land productivity was the result of adaptations in agricultural management. Linked to the introduction of new crops such as potatoes and turnips, these adaptations required that animals be kept in stables in order to produce more manure. The case of A Fonsagrada is an example of highly productive agriculture, fitting in the general trend for mixed farming intensification that was taking place across Europe during this First Agricultural Revolution.1Innovation in this period was driven by a peasant smallholding logic, which would later connect with the innovations of the second wave of agrarian change from the 1880s to the 1930s. In section 4these innovations will be discussed. First, we present the institutional, social, and economic framework in which innovations took place. 2. Farming innovation in Galicia (1880–1940): a framework of networks This section examines a model of change in intensive, small-scale solar-based organic agriculture in the context of socio-ecological transition before the Green Revolution as well as changes in Figure 2. Ribadavia. Changes in land productivity in cereal rotations: 1764, 1860, and 1888 (dry matter, sub products included). Source: (Corbacho, 2017). 156 Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, David Soto-Fernández and Bruno Esperante available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, farming innovation. This change allowed a significant increase in land and labour productivity with only a minimum amount of external energy subsidies. The period of 1880–1940 was one of accelerated technological change in agriculture, with important innovations linked to the second wave of industrialisation and powerful scientific advances in agricultural chemistry and animal and plant genetics.2These included the commercial development of mineral and chemical fertilisers, improvements in agricultural machinery and equipment with new designs and materials, new varieties of seeds, new livestock breeds and improvements in crop rotation, cultivation systems and irrigation. All this occurred in the aftermath of the agricultural crisis in Europe and offered new possibilities for increasing production and productivity, reducing costs, improving efficiency, and increasing the competitive capacity of agriculture. By the end of the nineteenth century, the mixed farming model of the eighteenth century had been exhausted and defeated by competition from New Europe, which flooded the markets with agricultural products and livestock from abroad.3Turn-of-the-twentieth-century agriculture still required handling nature in a paradigm that could neither master nor disregard it. Innovations were closely linked to the social and physical context. Technological advances in these decades impacted five essential physical-biological processes: energy use through mechanisation; bio-geochemical processes related to fertilisation; breeding practices, due to improved genetic material; hydrologic uses, based on new pumps and irrigation systems; and biotic regulation, thanks to new rotation schemes. Until 1945, no technology existed for transporting or using large amounts of energy to recreate homogeneous environmental conditions. The productivity of an agro-ecosystem was still determined by its own capacity to produce biomass (González de Molina, 2001). Given the scientific complexity of making new chemical, genetic or biological progress, it was no longer possible to wait for the usual process of local imitation and word-of-mouth propaganda. The key words were applicability, adaptation, and implementation. Farming innovation required the transfer of technology, and greater state intervention was necessary. In fact, the new role of the state in innovation was an important outcome of the political and agronomic debates regarding the agricultural crisis at the end of the nineteenth century and specific policy attempts to overcome it. Until then, the liberal state had left technological change in the hands of innovative landowners, but at this juncture the state took on a more proactive role.4In the aftermath of economic and social crises, turn-of-the-century Europe became a space in which farmers and tenants demanded and obtained recognition as voters and political subjects. With universal male suffrage (1890 in Spain) and peasant demands for ownership of the land they cultivated, farmers became the subject and object of public policy. They replaced idealised landowners as the new targets for innovation. Accordingly, a state institution led by scientists and technical experts was envisioned and constructed to facilitate training, experimentation, and demonstration. It sought to develop an apparatus that could expose farmers to innovations and help them adapt to new technologies. Precedents in Germany and the United States dating from the mid-nineteenth century inspired Figure 3. A Fonsagrada: cropland productivity in 1752, 1852, and 1887 (t/ha, dry matter). Source: (Corbacho, 2017). Rural History 157 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, the European phenomenon of creating state innovation systems for these purposes.5In the decades before the Civil War, the scientific contribution to agricultural innovation in Spain was facilitated by the creation of a state apparatus for innovation. The institutional development of the inputs and outputs market coexisted with the logic of an organic system in which farmers could accept or reject innovations. At the same time, farmers began to organise in unions, societies, and cooperatives, through which they intervened in the market and innovation processes. This period combines the logic of organic agriculture and farmers’knowledge with the potential for science-based intensification without disrupting the organic domain or the farmers’ agency. Contrary to the standard assumptions, this stage cannot be considered as an antecedent to or part of an inevitable teleological transition to hyperintense agriculture after the Second World War. We identify three key areas or spaces for the action of the innovating agents and for creating a kind of hybrid spaces of dialog between farmers’and technicians’knowledges: spaces for the connection between interests that did not always coincide and were even contradictory among technicians and scientists in possession of knowledge they considered new and superior; merchants and sellers of machinery, seeds or fertilisers that had to provide new inputs (beyond the experimental period); and farmers as the only possible adopters and, therefore, sole, and final agents of innovation. These three spaces function as three networks of knowledge, which are in fact connected to each other. First, the national innovation system acted to facilitate the adaptation or adoption of scientific and industrial innovation. For innovative agents, the state innovation model was decisive, with its network of research and innovation facilities, regional farms, and local demonstration camps. Second, companies fulfilled the role of supplying the mentioned innovations. Third, farmer associations were essential for the reception, selection, and adoption of technology, connecting farmers with the system and state innovation markets, but also developing other types of roles and values, as will be seen. 2.1. A network of scientists and technicians: national agricultural innovation system The agricultural innovation system gained new significance in Galicia in 1888. That year, the Regional Experimental Agricultural Farm for agricultural research was established outside the city of A Coru˜na, and with the Demonstration Fields that were installed in successive years throughout the territory, the institution would become the centre of a strategic knowledge network in Galicia. In the 1930s, the system included a phytopathology station attached to the A Coru˜na Experimental Farm, a pest laboratory at the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Provincial Agronomic Service, the Provincial and local Veterinarian Service and 20 Demonstration Fields that served much of Galicia. The system also incorporated private initiatives, including those of new organisations such as the Expansion Board of Studies, which founded a high-level research centre, the Biological Mission of Galicia, established in 1921, and also benefited from the participation of large groups of Galician emigrants in the Americas with the creation of several model farms.6This network was directed by agricultural technical experts of various sorts, including ten to twelve engineers and around another ten researchers at the Farm and the Mission along with veterinarians and mid-level agricultural experts in the Demonstration Fields. During its peak years of activity, in the years of the Second Spanish Republic, several other projects were planned for new centres and stations, which were linked to the development of the regional statute of autonomy. The increase in network facilities was understood as a political triumph of the farmers and a visible demonstration of the importance of agricultural interests and Galician agriculture and livestock.7 The main research centres (Regional Farm and Mission) functioned as governing bodies for the network of innovation centres. Although connected to the central organs of the state, they were endowed with considerable autonomy to define lines of research and scientific connections, in relation to the improvement of agricultural and livestock activities and cultivation systems. 158 Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, David Soto-Fernández and Bruno Esperante available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, The A Coru˜na regional farm in the north developed a main focus on livestock and fodder crops, while in southern Galicia the Mission emphasised food crops and animal genetics, mainly pigs. Both corresponded to the productive characteristics of the areas they served. Both also addressed fertilisation, offered recommendations on the use of new products, and tried to limit fraud. Efforts at reaching the target audience involved regular Bulletins (scientific journals) and pamphlets, periodicals, and regular agricultural sections in the regional press, as well as new broadcasting systems: radio programmes, travelling teachers with film projectors and other vehicles for public relations in the 1920s. Direct links between the Farm, the Demonstration Fields and technicians who demonstrated innovations locally facilitated farmer access to new technology. Ongoing relations with supply companies served at times as the main channel for the penetration of innovation, though relations between institutions and companies were always kept quite professional. More important was cooperation with locally organised agricultural or livestock societies and cooperatives, or even the creation of new associations with the help of technical experts from the Farm or Demonstration Fields (Figure 4). The Biological Mission was even involved in organising a Seed Producers Trade Union for experimenting with and disseminating hybrid maize (Fernández-Prieto and Cabo Villaverde, 1997; Esperante, Cabo Villaverde and Fernández-Prieto, 2020). 2.2. A dense network of merchants and sellers In this same period, from 1900 onward a commercial network of hardware stores spread through Galicia, providing new inputs (machinery, fertilisers, seeds :::) and following the same structural hierarchy of hamlets and villages (Fernández-Prieto, 1992). The density of that network was essential for the supply mechanism to work. In addition, to understand the decisive importance of this network, it is necessary to consider the complex structure of population centres in Galician territory. Galicia had and continues to have a very dispersed and aged population, but with a welldefined hierarchy from the village to the city, passing through the parish and the town as a regional nucleus. A revealing fact in this sense is that the territory of Galicia accounts for no less than 50 per cent of the population entities included in the Spanish gazetteer. The construction of this network of companies was part of the technological offer of the second wave of industrialisation. It begins with the experimentation centres themselves, which were part of the agricultural innovation system, and which connected suppliers and foreign commercial Figure 4. County Agricultural Demonstration Fields (1900–39). Source: (Fernández-Prieto, 1992: 127). Rural History 159 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, houses with farmers’societies, fulfilling a function that Rasmussen assigned to the companies themselves in the American case (1962). Thus, from the First World War, the supply model at the regional level worked with the interrelationship of industries and merchants, farmers’societies and federations, local blacksmiths, and technicians from regional experimentation centres. This is confirmed in several counties such as A Coru˜na or Ribadeo (Fernández-Prieto, 1988), but also in Ortegal county, where the Ortigueira Agrarian Federation established a direct contract with the French company Societé Lyonaise de Construction des Machines Agricoles in 1924 (Rosende, 1988: 116–18). The main support of the network will be the hardware stores, about whose expansion and growth we have relevant data. The 1903 Galician Guide censuses, or the Bailly-Bailliery yearbooks reveal that in the first decade of the twentieth century, the number of municipalities in Galicia that had a hardware store tripled, reaching half of the 313 municipalities (Fernández-Prieto, 1992: 234). The main concentration of these establishments (which supplied machinery and fertilisers) was located on the coast and at inland county capitals. Coinciding with the Great War, and with demand consolidated, some Spanish houses, such as the Basque Ajuria in 1914, established themselves directly in the inland Galician cities of Lugo and Ourense, and many hardware stores specialised in the selling of machinery, especially mechanical threshers. Entrepreneurs such as Villaverde in Santiago, Félix Vilas in Lugo, Torres and Sáez in Coru˜na, sold machines and implements in their area of influence. One interesting example was the Ajuria company (established in 1910 at Alava, Basque Country), the most important network among those producing and distributing new ploughs, threshing machines, and commercial tools (Martínez Ruíz, 2000). Integrated by several delegations and local stores that represented the firm, this network was a widespread commercial system that brought products to the most remote places, and it was directly linked with the huge expansion of new ploughs and threshing machines all through Galicia in this period. In addition, the products themselves required frequent supplies and repairs, and in the case of engines in threshing machines, a fuel supply (Figure 5). The distribution of points of sale of the Ajuria company is known from the register of sellers prepared by the managers of the Ajuria house in Lugo. The Carballeira brothers had run the Ajuria plant in Galicia since 1924. Other wholesalers and construction companies were also concentrated in Lugo. The reason for this concentration was the location of the city. From there they served a large agricultural area of inland Galicia. In addition, it was the Galician city with the best and fastest rail link with the production centres in the Basque city of Vitoria and other peninsular Figure 5. Commercial network: stores selling Ajuria Co. products in 1930. Source: (Fernández-Prieto, 1992: 238). 160 Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, David Soto-Fernández and Bruno Esperante available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, Technicians discover that the only way they can develop their mission to innovate and improve agriculture is by understanding household logic and the needs of farmers’families. They realise this in the same way and at the same time as Alexander Tchaianov and others. As can be seen in the results of this type of innovation, perhaps the most significant aspect was that it addressed the needs of existing agriculture as expressed by the farmers themselves, in a bottom-up way rather than by following arbitrary tradition: an elitist and interventionist tradition that scientists and technicians themselves, working in the field and with the farmers, identified and recognised as ineffective. This new generation of ‘modern’agronomists and veterinarians of the early twentieth century broke with the practices of the nineteenth century. And they identified both themselves and their knowledge as modern. In our search for actors, we found that this kind of Tchaianovian scientist shaped the rural economy in Galicia between the two World Wars, making the transfer of technology possible and bringing innovation to small-scale farming. And in addressing the question of who selected and who benefited from new technology in this space and time, we found the farmer in the role of protagonist. Thus, ‘cui prodest new technology?’: farming households and their productive and reproductive logics. Peasant knowledge has historically developed land management techniques that would ensure resilience and sustainability in the long term. How unsustainability irrupted in agroecosystems once this knowledge was eliminated is a question for further papers. Acknowledgements. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the journal’s editors for their suggestions and comments, which helped to significantly improve this article. We also want to thank Beatriz Corbacho-González and the Histagra research group for their support and contributions to this article. This article was cofunded by the ‘ECOPASADOFUTURO’PID2020-112686GB-I00, and also by the project ‘AGROECOLAND’PID2021-123129NB-C41, both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Shortcomings are our responsibility alone. Notes 1The results of such process have been analysed, for instance, by Soto-Fernández (2006). 2Several researchers have addressed this period. From a global approach in (Feller, 1962; Thompson, 1968). About the initial diffusion of agricultural tractors in Britain in (Collins, 1984). About Dutch agriculture in (Van Zanden, 1986). In this smallscale Iberian Atlantic agriculture (Galicia), we have identified a model of innovation involving farmers themselves, new state innovation systems and the market (Fernández-Prieto, 2001). 3English mixed farming from an English point of view, the Norfolk system, since Arthur Young (Prothero Ernle, 1912; Chambers and Mingay, 1966). A system of so-called ‘Dutch Husbandry’, as first developed in the Low Countries; about the early development of intensive land cultivation around the North Sea there is a long historical controversy. See (Kerridge, 1969; Vanden Broeke and Vanderpijpen, 1978). 4About ideal innovative landowners, such as the English gentleman farmer in (Alter, 1987); or Italian emprenditori in (Fumian, 1987,1988). 5As shown for Europe by (Wade, 1981; Fumian, 1983; Knöning, 1996). For the Spanish and Galician case in (FernándezPrieto, 1992,2007). 6The Biological Mission was created by the Junta de Ampliaci´on de Estudios (Council for the Expansion of Scientific Research and Study), a para-state organism created in 1907 to foster research. About the initiatives of Galician emigrants to the Americas in (Fernández-Prieto, 1992;Nú˜nez Seixas, 1998). 7Resources granted to the Regional Farm tripled between 1896 and 1910 and were translated into facilities, laboratories, libraries, and personnel. See details in (Fernández-Prieto, 1988). 8Although historically the breed was the product of those necessities (Hernández Robredo, 1910). 9This is a conclusion taken from his experience after three decades. ‘El estudiante en acci´on’,El Sol,9 th March 1930. The breed purity selection is the same as that followed in the Basque Country with the Pyrenean breed (Conde G´omez, 2015: 206–10). 10 Although dating from before 1936, the text was published in 1958 by Pe˜na Novo (1958). 11 Here we also note that physical production comprises all types of production, including those that have no monetary value, but are fundamental for family reproduction and the ecological maintenance of production (residual). See in depth in (Infante Amate, 2012). 12 Information about calf prices, see Estudio General de la ganadería en Espa˜na (1917); Ministerio de Fomento: Direcci´on General de Agricultura, Minas y Montes (Madrid, 1920). 13 In reference to Russian agrarian specialist Alexandre Tchaianov and his 1925 publication The Organization of Peasant Economic Units. See Shanin (1990), and recently in Bruisch (2016). Rural History 167 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, References Alter, P. 1987. The Reluctant Patron: Science and the state in Britain, 1850–1900 (Oxford). Balboa, X. 1990, O monte en Galicia (Vigo). Barca, S. 2020. Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (Cambridge). Bouhier, A. 1979. La Galice: essai geographique d’analyse et d’interpretation d’un vieux complexe agrarie (La Roche-sur-Yon). Bruisch, K. 2016. ‘Land soil and people: agriculture wxpertise and power (19th and 20th centuries)’,inChiers du Monde Russe, 57:1 Burton, J. F. R. 2019. ‘The failure of early demonstration agriculture on nineteenth century model/pattern farms: lessons for contemporary demonstration’,The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension,26:2, 1–14 <DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1080/1389224X.2019.1674168>. Cabo Villaverde, M. 1998. O agrarismo (Vigo). Carmona, C. and De la Puente, L. 1988. ‘Crisis agraria y vías de evoluci´on ganadera en Galicia y Cantabria’, in R. Garrabou, ed., La crisis agraria de fines del siglo XIX (Barcelona), pp. 191–211. Carmona, X. 1982. ‘Sobre as orixes da orientaci´on exportadora na producci´on bovina galega: as exportaci´ons a Inglaterra na segunda mitade do século XIX’,Grial: Anexo Historia,1: 169–206. Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E. 1966. The Agricultural Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York, NY). Collins, E. J. T. 1972. ‘The diffusion of the threshing machine in Britain, 1790–1880’,inTools and Tillage, II:1, 16–33. Collins, E. J. T. 1984. ‘The Agricultural Tractor in Britain, 1900–1940’, in H. Winkel and K. Hermann, eds, The Development of Agricultural Technology in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Ostfildern), pp. 23–48. Conde G´omez, D. 2015. Juan Rof Codina, Renovaci´on na veterinaria e gandaría galega contemporánea (Vigo). Corbacho, B. 2017. ‘Agricultural Intensification of a Peasant Agriculture in an Atlantic Territory: Galicia, 1750–1900’(PhD dissertation, University of Santiago de Compostela). Domínguez Castro, L. 1995. ‘Reflexi´ons en torno ás crises vitícolas do Ribeiro contemporáneo’, in J. Juana and X. Castro, eds, Xornadas de Historia de Galicia (Ourense), pp. 202–09. Domínguez García, M. D. and Soto, D. 2012. ‘From an “Integrated”to a “Dismantled”Landscape’, in C. Martijn van der Heide and W. Heijman, eds, The Economic Value of Landscapes (London). Esperante, B., Cabo Villaverde, M. and Fernández-Prieto, L. 2020. ‘Old and new plants from the Americas to Europe: potatoes, corn and the genetics of double hybrid corn (1800–1940)’,Rural History,31:53–62 <DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0956793319000396>. Federico, G. 2005. Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800–2000 (Princeton, NJ). Feller, I. 1962. ‘Inventive activity in agriculture 1837–1890’,Journal of Economic History,22: 560–77. Fernández-Prieto, L. 1988. A Granxa Agrícola-Experimental da Coru˜na, 1888–1928: Contribuci´on ao estudio de renovaci´on técnica da agricultura galega (Santiago de Compostela). Fernández-Prieto, L. 1992. Labregos con ciência: Estado, sociedade e innovaci´on tecnol´oxicanaagriculturagalega,1850–1939 (Vigo). Fernández-Prieto, L. 1997. ‘Selecci´on de innovaciones en una agricultura atlántica de peque˜nas explotaciones. Galicia, 1900–1936: La adopci´on de las trilladoras mecánicas’,Historia Agraria,14: 133–63. Fernández-Prieto, L. 2007. El apag´on tecnol´ogico del franquismo, Estado e innovaci´on en la agricultura espa˜nola del siglo XX (Valencia). Fernández-Prieto, L. and Cabo Villaverde, M. 1997. ‘O labor da Misi´on Biol´oxica de Pontevedra ata 1936 e a reforma da agricultura galega en Cruz Gallástegui Unamuno’,Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, XLIII: 105–52. Fernández-Prieto, L. 2001. ‘Caminos del cambio tecnol´ogico en las agriculturas espa˜nolas contemporáneas’, in Pujol et al., eds, El pozo de todos los males: Sobre el atraso en la agricultura espa˜nola contemporánea (Barcelona), pp. 95–146. Fitzgerald, D. 2003. Every Farm a Factory, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven, CT). Fumian, C. 1983. ‘Il governo dell’agricultura in Italia e in Francia, 1914–1940’,Italia Contemporanea,151–2:65–81. Fumian, C. 1987. ‘Propietari, imprenditori, agronomi’, in S. Lanaro, ed., Il Veneto (Torino), pp. 99–162. Fumian, C. 1988. ‘La milizie di Cerere: Per una tipologia dell’imprenditore agrario lombardo’,inPadania,3. Gallástegui Unamuno, C. 1934. ‘Ventajas e inconvenientes de la semilla doble híbrida en relaci´on con la semilla de variedades’,Boletín del Sindicato de Productores de Semillas, 16. González de Molina, M. 2001. ‘Condicionamientos ambientales del crecimiento agrario espa˜nol (siglos XIX–XX)’, in Pujol et al., eds, El Pozo de todos los males (Barcelona), pp. 42–94. González de Molina, M., et al. 2010. ‘Claves del crecimiento agrario: la reposici´on de la fertilidad en la agricultura andaluza de los siglos XVII y XIX’, in R. Garrabou Segura and M. González de Molina, eds, La reposici´on de la fertilidad en los sistemas agrarios tradicionales (Barcelona), pp. 126–70. Grigg, D. 1982. The Dynamics of Agricultural Change: The Historical Experience (London). Grigg, D. 1992. The Transformation of Agriculture in the West (Oxford). Harwood, J. 2013. ‘Has the Green Revolution been a cumulative learning process’,Third World Quarterly,34:3, 397–404. Hernández Robredo, L. 1910. Memoria del 5 Concurso de Ganado de Ortigueira (Ortigueira), pp. 11–12. Huetz de Lemps, A. 1967. Vignobles et vins du Nord-Ouest de l’Espagne (Bourdeaux). 168 Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, David Soto-Fernández and Bruno Esperante available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, Iglesias Pérez, M. 1985. ‘Efectes de l’aplicaci´o de residus vegetals sobre la fracci´o orgànica dels sols’,Quaderns Agraris,85: 115–24. Infante Amate, I. 2012. ‘The ecology and history of the Mediterranean olive grove: the Spanish great expansion, 1750–2000’, Rural History,23:2, 161–84. Iturra, R. 1993. ‘Letrados y campesinos: el método experimental en la antropología econ´omica’, in E. Sevilla Guzmán and M. González de Molina, Ecología, campesinado e historia (Madrid), pp. 131–53. Jones, P. M. 2016. Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledege, Technology, and Nature, 1750–1840 (Oxford). Kerridge, E. 1969. ‘The agricultural revolution reconsidered’,Agricultural History,45: 463–76. Köning, N 1996. The Failure of Agrarian Capitalism: Agrarian Politics in the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands and the USA, 1846–1919 (London). Latour, B. 2001. La esperanza de Pandora, ensayos sobre la realidad de los estudios de la ciencia (Barcelona). Macdonald, S. 1975. ‘The progress of the early threshing machine’,Agricultural History Review,23:63–77. Martínez L´opez, A. 1995. Cooperativismo y transformaciones agrarias en Galicia: 1886–1943, Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentaci´on y Medio Ambiente (Madrid). Martínez Ruíz, J. I. 2000. Trilladoras y tractores: energía, tecnología e industria en la mecanizaci´on de la agricultura espa˜nola (1862–1967) (Sevilla). Nú˜nez Seixas, X. M. 1998. Emigrantes, Caciques e indianos (Vigo). O‘Flynn, T., Macken-Walsh, A., Lane, A. and High, Ch. 2018. ‘Farmers Doing it for Themselves: How Farmer-Inventors are Frustrated by their Interactions with the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System’, paper presented at the 13th European IFSA (International Farming System Association) Sympsosium, 1st to 5th July, Chania, Crete <http://oro. open.ac.uk/id/eprint/55759>. Olson, M., 1971, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA). Pe˜na Novo, L. 1958. ‘La estructura econ´omica de Galici’,Revista de Economía de Galicia,2. Prothero Ernle, R. E. 1912. English Farming, Past and Present (London). Rasmussen, W. D. 1962. ‘The impact of technological change on American agriculture, 1862–1962’,Journal of Economic History,22:4, 578–91. Rosenberg, N. 1994. Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics and History (Cambridge). Rosende, O. 1988. O agrarismo na comarca do Ortegal, 1893–1936 (Edici´ons do Castro). Schultz, T. 1964. Transforming Traditional Agriculture (New Haven, CT). Scott, J. C. 1987. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT). Shanin, Th. 1990. Defining Peasants: Essays Concerning Rural Societies, Expolary Economies and the Learning from them in the Contemporary World (Oxford). Solow, R. 1957. ‘Technical change and the agregate production function’,The Review of Economic and Statistics, 312–20. Soto-Fernández, D. 2006. Historia dunha agricultura sustentable: transformaci´ons produtivas na agricultura galega contemporánea (Santiago). Thompson, E. P. 1993. Customs in Common Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, NY). Thompson, F. M. L. 1968. ‘The second agricultural revolution, 1815–1880’,Economic History Review,21:62–77. Van Zanden, J. L. 1986. ‘De economische ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse Landbouw in the nepentiende eeur, 1800–1914’ (PhD dissertation, University of Wageningen). Vanden Broeke, C. and Vanderpijpen, C. 1978. ‘The Agricultural Revolution in Flandes and in Belgium, Myth or Reality?’,in H. Vander Wee and E. Van Cawbenberghe, eds, Produtivity of Land and Agricultural Innovation in the Law Countries (1250–1800) (Leuven), pp. 164–70. Vázquez-González, A. 2000. ‘La emigraci´on gallega a América, 1830–1930’(PhD dissertation, University of Santiago de Compostela). Villares, R. 1982. La propiedad de la tierra en Galicia, 1500–1936 (Madrid). Wade, W. W. 1981. Institutional Determinants of Technical Change and Agricultural Productivity Growth. Denmark, France and Great Britain, 1870–1965 (New York, NY). Cite this article: Fernández-Prieto L, Soto-Fernández D, and Esperante B (2024). How farmers adopt new technologies: connections between farmer and technician knowledges in Galicia (NW Iberian Peninsula) (1880–1940). Rural History 35, 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Rural History 169 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793323000043 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, on 29 Jan 2025 at 10:28:15, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,