Structural analysis of Spain's cereal production sector using PCA.

The climatic conditions and geographical constraints in Spain have led to the development of a highly heterogeneous agricultural sector. Hence the need for a classification of farms into different farm types that allows for the development of solutions that are specific to each group. Many techniques can be used to perform such a classification, but only a few techniques use agricultural census data. This paper presents a methodology based on the combined use of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and a Combinatorial Method to classify farms into farm groups at a national level according to their location and production system. The results presented in this paper correspond to the population of farms that produce cereals in Spain, according to agricultural census data [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]