Part-time agriculture in the high Catalan mountains. The case of Alt Urgell

Resumen

This article seeks to bring a new point of view to usual typologies concerning high mountain farming. Catalan mountain farming -with a high prevalence of family farms with no hired workers, and immersed in the accumulation process peculiar to the capitalist market- can't survive nowadays without outside money contributions which make possible the continuity of the peasant economical cell. Part -time farming and the contribations of financia1 resources other than farming is creating a new conception of the peasant economical enterprise, where the alternance and outside incomes contribute to keeping a population minimum, able to articulate the land at issue. This change of direction causes a crisis on the adaptation of the rural family in an unfavorable economical medium and willing to remain in the mountain. Emigration -a valid option years ago- does not represent any more feasible alternative due to the economical crisis. On the other side, since it is a land highly specialized in dairy cattle, the entry into the Common Market has increased the inner contradictions of farms less adapted to the agricultural market.