Fragmentation of Agricultural Holdings in Spain.

Fragmentation of holdings denotes the situation in which the average farm consists of numerous small parcels scattered haphazardly about in the area within a given rural community. In Spain as a whole there is an average of 17 separate tracts per farm, and the phenomenon is particularly acute in the northwestern one-fourth of the country where the number of parcels per farm runs as high as 84 in the Province of Soria and averages above 40 in Burgos, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Segovia, and Zamora. Most of the social and economic effects of fragmentation are adverse, although the spreading of risks and the diffusion of a family's interests to all parts of the community in which it resides may be advantageous. As sociologists from the United States accept professional responsibilities in other parts of the world, many of them are forced to deal in one way or another with the phenomenon of fragmentation of agricultural holdings. This constitutes an intellectual challenge of the first order of magnitude since this subject has seldom figured in the contemplations and writings of the sociologists in this country.