ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the evolution of agriculture and agricultural policies in Spain and Portugal, respectively, during 1950s decade. It provides special attention to technological innovation processes and the role of key actors such as the technical agronomic elites within these dictatorships. The influence of international fascism on agriculture and the rural world materialised in a series of core policies that were commonly adopted by the political regimes of various European countries within the fascist ideological sphere. These policies were characterised by economic intervention in every phase of agriculture, from production to commercialisation, preference for technical agricultural reform, inclusion of the rural population in mass organisations, and a discourse that exalted the ethical and moral virtues of the rural world. Along with two policies derived from agrarian fascism, reforestation and a new version of agricultural colonisation, land consolidation constituted a third and novel reference measure in the 1950s.
