Although with some reduction and whenever requisites are fulfilled3, olive oil farmers
will receive an equivalent aid to the one they used to receive in the reference period from 1999
to 2003 (four commercialization crop years).
On the other hand, for olive oil farmings with a lower extension to 0.3 hectare, payments
will be totally dissociated from production after 2006.
Agriculture Ministry of Spain has proposed a decoupling of 93.61%4 The main objetive
of this subsidy is to keep olive tree as a social and enviromental interest farming. The rest of
percentage till 100% of subsidy is destined by Agriculture Ministry to national endowment in
order to give an extra payment per olive tree farming, for farmer associations, quality
improvement, and so on. To simplify, there will not be payments per olive tree farmings
samaller than 50 euros per subsidy application.
On the other hand, to prevent market unbalances, the access to single farm payment will
be limited to olive tree farming existing before first May 19985 and new farming foreseen in
approved programmes by the European Commision.
3.2. Methods
Methodology used to reach the aims of this research is shown in the following schema
(J.M. Martin, 1998):
Phase 1. Survey process
To get agrarian sector information we choose the survey method, because we believe it
is the most effective although it is not easy to get information from this sector. The method used
has been the sampling survey (L. Festinger & L. Katz, 1998), where a representative part of the
total population (universe) was interviewed. As everybody knows, it is only possible to make
this type of survey when people selected to this purpose want to give the information requested.
We believe that this method is completely valid and possible in the agrarian sector even when
people surveyed tries to repress or distort information. Our experience corroborate that. The
sampling design was made, as it has already said with 1,527 farms surveys in the first studio,
1,530 in the second, 2,018 in the third and 392 in the last one. Within the sampling techniques
we opted for one of the most wellknown: the proportional sampling of elements (L. Kish, 1990).
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3 Council Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003 of 29 September 2003. For Spain the definitive amount of funds were
passed in a Cabinet Meeting of April 2004.
4 See REAL DECRETO 1617/2005, of 30 December 2005
5 Council Regulation (EC) No 1638/98