Correlations between historical climate data and incidents of common bunt in Spanish wheat, 1755-1801

Fernando Martínez Moreno, Ignacio Solís, Mariano Barriendos and Ernesto Tejedor
Additional contact information
Fernando Martínez Moreno: University of Seville
Ignacio Solís: University of Seville
Mariano Barriendos: University of Barcelona
Ernesto Tejedor: University at Albany

Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural, 2020, issue 82, 67-97

Abstract: From 1755 to 1801 in Spain, many articles and reports were written about common bunt, a seed-borne plague that was difficult to control at the time. The objective of the study is to better understand this plague and the relationship between historical rainfall indexes and years of higher reported outbreaks. We compared documentary sources on extreme rain events and annual series of wheat prices in four locations (Murcia, Seville, Toledo, and Zamora) with data from articles about the bunt plague. Increased severity of common bunt in wheat coincided with a concentration of such events, during a period of severe climatic irregularity known as the Maldà Anomaly. However, the cause-and-effect relationship for proxies of historical weather, price volatility and bunt plague was only significant in Seville. A complementary factor that explains the abundance of literature was access to agricultural articles and books from France, where the common bunt also existed. The first experiments to understand the plague and how to control it were performed there. These events are framed in the Spanish Enlightenment and early physiocratic ideas advocating the importance of agriculture in maintaining the wealth of a country.

Keywords: Maldà Anomaly; pro serenitate rogations; Tilletia; Triticum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 N5 Q0 Q1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10 ... quence=1&isAllowed=y (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:seh:journl:y:2020:i:82:m:december:p:67-97

Access Statistics for this article

Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural is currently edited by Vicente Pinilla

More articles in Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural from Sociedad Española de Historia Agraria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vicente Pinilla ().