Our survey
We wanted to know people's beliefs about crops, so we decided to design a survey and ask some farmers in Dúrcal. The questions are written in Spanish, because we were going to ask Spanish people, but we will analyse the results in English.
This is the survey:
And the results were analysed in this table.
We asked people for how many years they had been working in the country. The results are below, with an average of 25.39 years.
The respondents were very experienced, because 80% of them have been working as farmers for more than 10 years, and 30% for more than 40 years.
We asked if they thought that the climate had changed in Lecrín Valley and these are the results.
Then, we decided to go further and find out what changes had taken place in the last years, according to farmers' opinion, and that is what they told us:
The bar-graphs above show the number of respondents who agree with the various statements in blue and those who do not agree in red. It follows that, according to farmers in the Valley, spring and autumn have hardly changed, while approximately two-thirds of people think that summers are longer and drier, and approximately one half think that they are longer and warmer. Regarding winters, one half of the people think that they are shorter and colder, about one fifth think that winters are weirder and 28% that they are more unstable.
We asked about the type of crops they grew up. According to the results, the major crop is the olive tree, followed by the almond tree, vegetables, citrus and cherry trees.
Most of the respondents own small areas of land for cultivation, where there are different species of crops, from one to eleven, as shown in the table.
The average is 3.71 different crops with a standard deviation of 2.00. 80% of people own between 1 and 5 different crops. The Mode is 3, which means that the majority of respondents grow 3 different varieties. The median is 3 as well, that is, 50% of respondents have 3 or fewer different crops, and the other 50% have 3 or more.
We asked farmers the changes that they had observed in the last few years in regards with crops.
As we can see in the bar chart, the main change observed by more than 50% of the population is that crops have become more vulnerable, with 61% of respondents thinking this way. It is followed by the advance of the collection in time, with 51% and a decrease in production with 45% of the answers.
Finally, we wanted to collect information about other factors that may affect the change observed in local agriculture, and this was the result:
40.8% of respondents think that urban development and infrastructures in the Lecrín Valley have influenced crops, compared to 59.2% who do not.
To a greater extent, the fact that workers are devoted to other productive sectors has a greater influence, according to 56.9% of the answers.
Only 40.8% think that it is the lack of fundings for the agriculture, and almost a half, 48.5%, that it is very easy to find the same products in the market.
Summarizing, people who work in agriculture are very experienced. They mainly grow olive trees, almond trees, citrus and cherry trees. Most farmers grow between one and five different varieties.
They have observed some changes in the climate over the last years such as longer, drier and hotter summers and shorter and colder winters.
These changes, along with other factors, have made crops more vulnerable, leading to an earlier collection and reducing production.
Additionally, there are other factors that may have influenced these changes, such as urban development, people working in other sectors, the ease of acquiring products from other locations and the lack of fundings for agriculture.