The recent changes in the Portuguese farms' land uses: an application of an approach based on HJ-Biplot

摘要

The Portuguese 2009 Agricultural Census (RGA 2009) is still not completely analyzed by the researchers and a more precise analysis may provide new information about the tendencies and the actual situation of Portuguese agriculture, namely regarding land uses changes and farms' orientation. Therefore, the objective of this work is to present an approach based on HJ-Biplot analysis that is able to identify the main tendencies regarding the farms' land uses for Continental Portugal at the municipality level and to create groups with different orientations and tendencies regarding land uses. Results show that the HJ-Biplot methodology allows extrapolating information on the different trends in terms of land use specialization at municipality level. The groups of municipalities created according to trends and specialization may be an added value for analysis and policy evaluation.