ABSTRACT
Agriculture continued to be the most significant factor impacting on the Mediterranean environment in the twentieth century, despite the parallel increases in industrialization and tourism that were particularly marked in the second half of the century. To support the ever growing populations at the regional scales, agriculture has seen continual intensification and reorientation towards increasingly efficient production systems, so that traditional land-use practices have fallen out of favour. This chapter describes the extent to which Mediterranean agriculture has become more intensive, and how this varies from region to region. Specific examples of how this intensification has been put into practice and its consequences are then discussed. We then assess the nature of land degradation from the changes in agricultural practice and how the continued development of agriculture into the first quarter of the twenty-first century will affect the observed trends of degradation.
