agri-culture

Sometimes on the Road I could be sad or angry about the path and the landscape.
Due to age, experience, education and an open eye for it I learnt to 'read' the landscape. See it with different eyes. About the past, developments, history. For example: If you see a nice, large cornfield on the Meseta, I might see monoculture, influence of Brussels, the trees that have been cut down, or natural landscape that has disappeared. Or: if you notice how smooth and broad and straight the paths are, I might think- well, this looks quite new, must have been some project to approve the Camino. How was it before that, what is lost?
'Spain' can be so... rücksichtslos in how the landscape is treated (this German word is the best I can find for it, it's also figurative: not looking back...). There is so much space... every one can build a factory anywhere, a barn, a house, and there's not much care about what it looks like. Or the huge eucalyptus forests you see a lot,  which have negative influence on the local species and need to much water for this dry country.
Of course- I'm from a totally planned country. But Spain is quite the opposite.
You even still see nature that is being cultivated. Unimaginable in Northern Europe since a few decades. I do hope the world might need the products that are grown there someday..

So a lot of the Spanish landscape has changed over the last decades. So agri-culture (agri means field) might destroy other culture.. I'm glad there's so much left to enjoy.

Gitlitz writes they saw less and less cowherds, watched by mostly older people, over the last decades. About the eucalyptus tree: "Their biggest 'advantage' is that their owners do not have to stand all day, umbrella in hand, watching them grow, but instead can work in the factories in Lugo or Compostela."
(from Gitlitz and Davidson: The pilgrimage Road to Santiago, p. 338)

The young farmer - in his 40.000 euro tractor with airconditioning, a good chair, radio and all that - has to make a living too. Economic chains we're all tied into. But could you grow slow food on a field you can't even plough in a whole day? 
His grandfather - or even his father - might have ploughed part of this same field with two oxes. 

Just think about it for a while. Be aware.