Traditional agrarian society and self-consumption

In traditional rural society, livestock and farming produced practically all the foodstuffs needed for the population. In the case of the towns to the south of Madrid, livestock was less important compared to farming. Most flocks of sheep and herds of goats were one of the main sources of protein for families with limited resources. In this area, extensive shepherding was carried out taking advantage of stubble fields and fallow lands, and also grazing on common pastures which were also used for draught animals.

The shepherding system in these municipalities was adapted to populations with limited resources and no land, where a shepherd collected the sheep and goats from each house in the morning and took them to graze. With the privatising of common goods and the occupation and fragmentation of cattle tracks, the practice of extensive shepherding gradually disappeared in the Madrid metropolitan region, and this was a serious threat to the sustainability of agro-shepherding systems.