ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the century analysed in this chapter, about two-thirds of the Portuguese labour force was employed in the agricultural sector. Agricultural workers had very low standards of living and were poorly educated. Moreover, they had too little capital to work with including animals, tools, buildings, irrigation systems and other infrastructures, and the land endowment was also comparatively small. Thus, the average productivity of Portugal’s agricultural workers was very low by western European standards and compared only to the levels attained in the poorest and most remote areas of the Continent, such as the southern provinces of Spain and Italy, Greece and the Balkan countries (Lains 2003c: chapters 1 and 4). By 1930 the share of labour force in Portuguese agriculture was virtually the same as half a century before, and only after 1950 did that share start declining in a significant and consistent way. The absolute decline in the number of workers in agriculture happened only during the 1960s.1
