The agri-food and other bio-based sectors in Spain. A description based on multiplier analysis

The turnover of the EU agri-food sector overtops 2,000 billion Euros a year and employs roughly 22 millions workers. The focus of this paper is on the sectors directly linked to agricultural production and the food industry. Having a comprehensive understanding of extended agri-food economic linkages is critical when designing pertinent policies to deliver the full potential of strong EU agri-food and other bio-based sectors. A more disaggregated view is required. This study stars from a Social Accounting Matrices (SAM) for Spain with a highly disaggregated agricultural sector (AgroSAMs) for the year 2000. This study uses the AgroSAMs in its entire disaggregation, in order to provide a descriptive analysis of the agri-food and bio-based sectors. The limits of this approach are evident as many changes in the EU economies have taken place within a decade. However, the AgroSAMs are the only Pan-European database providing the details on all sectors mentioned. An update of the AgroSAMs for the year 2007 is ongoing and will provide more recent data and results .The focus is on Spain; nevertheless a review for every EU Member State is first performed to detect potential key sectors. The methodology adopted in this study allows the analysis of the EU agrifood and other bio-based sectors in space and time