Life on the farm was on a smaller scale when Alberto Pascual was young: just him, his father, a hired hand and about 50 pigs. Today, the 44-year-old Spanish agricultural engineer has five farms that have more than 40,000 pigs between them.
For Mr Pascual and others like him, the growth of pig farming in Spain — a country associated with porcine products such as chorizo and jamón ibérico — goes beyond the story of his own business’s expansion and success.
He has one answer to two big questions the country is wrestling with: how to reverse the depopulation of rural areas, and where to spend some of the €140bn in coronavirus crisis funds Spain expects to get from the EU over the next six years. That answer is pork.
“What we are doing is creating jobs, so that people have an opportunity to stay in the village — or come to the village — rather than go to Madrid,” said Mr Pascual, who employs some 50 people in the province of Avila in Castille-Leon.
He…