A cereal problem

Abstract

[Excerpt] Portugal’s historic quest to provide itself with cereal crops always centred on a desire to transform its large southern Alentejo region into a national bread basket. Some blamed its persistent refusal to oblige on unfavourable growing conditions, the large size of its estates, or the feudal patterns of land ownership. Others claimed the problem was a lack of workers, or laziness caused either by the heat or the peasants’ Moorish origins.[...]