ABSTRACT

In May of 1991, a group of people attending a European meeting on regional development were visiting a farm in Euskadi and saw that the farmer had some unusual pigs munching away on the grass. It was a very old race that had virtually disappeared from the Basque hills, but this farmer kept breeding a few because they were exceptionally well adapted to the local climate and, quite simply, never got sick. The visitors were surprised, in a positive way, to find someone resisting the push towards uniformity that is penetrating the Basque countryside. As farmers in the region often say, (Spain did not enter the Common Market. The Common Market entered Spain.) Still, the farmer's decision to stick to his own traditional breed might payoff ... to the pork industry in the North. That same year a disease was spreading among pigs in the factory farms of Northern Europe, a disease to which his unique Basque herd was resistant. Now, government officials were calling on him to hand over some ofhis pigs for crossing with the vulnerable breeds up North, to save the pork industry there.