Animal welfare and extensive farming in the dehesa
Contents
What is a dehesa? In one line, it is pasture under scattered oaks, kept open by people for centuries so that animals can live beneath the trees. It is also where free-range Iberico pigs spend the montanera. The dehesa is credited with a great many virtues, and some of them do not survive checking. We kept what the sources support, and we name the claims that did not make it.
The short answer
A dehesa is a farming system in which at least half the ground is pasture, under scattered mature oaks that bear acorns and cover 5 to 60% of it. Spain has around 3.5 million hectares of it.
- Space is where it parts company with indoor farming. A pig of 85 to 110 kg kept indoors is entitled to 0.65 m², a pig in montanera to anything up to four hectares.
- The European Union protects it as habitat 6310 and assesses its conservation status as unfavourable.
- It is not on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It does sit at the heart of three biosphere reserves.
- Four claims you read everywhere do not hold up against the sources. We list them further down, and say why.
Where this information comes from
The surface areas and the definition of the dehesa come from the Libro Verde de la Dehesa, the Spanish scientific consensus document, and from the Portuguese national forest inventory. The stocking densities come from European directive 2008/120/EC and from Royal Decree 4/2014. The protection status comes from the Habitats Directive and the records of the UNESCO MAB programme.
We sell ham that comes from this dehesa, so we have every reason to speak well of it. That is why we checked each claim before writing it, and why several of them came out.
What is a dehesa, and where is it in Spain?
The reference definition is precise. A dehesa is a farming system in which at least half the surface is pasture, under scattered mature trees that bear acorns. Those trees cover between 5 and 60% of the ground. So the dehesa is neither forest nor meadow. It is a middle ground, and left to itself the land would not stay that way.
Spain has around 3.5 million hectares of dehesa, spread over 1,300 municipalities. Extremadura holds 35% of it and Andalusia 27%. Castilla-La Mancha has another 21% and Castilla y León 13%, and the province of Salamanca, where our pieces come from, lies in Castilla y León. Across the border, the Portuguese montado adds close to a million hectares more.
Its age calls for some caution. The word dehesa turns up in medieval texts, but it then meant an enclosed private pasture and said nothing about the trees. The open wooded parkland you see today took hold in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. You will often read “two thousand years”, and the standard historical research does not say so.
How much space dehesa pigs get, in figures and on the ground
Space is the most telling figure in this article, and every value in the table is set by regulation.
| Farming system | Space per animal | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Indoors, 85 to 110 kg | 0.65 m² | Directive 2008/120/EC |
| Indoors, over 110 kg | 1 m² | Directive 2008/120/EC |
| Iberico cebo, indoors, over 110 kg | 2 m² | Royal Decree 4/2014 |
| Iberico cebo de campo, intensive open-air rearing, over 110 kg | 100 m² | Royal Decree 4/2014 |
| Montanera, depending on tree cover | 8,000 to 40,000 m² | Royal Decree 4/2014 |
Minimum space per animal. In montanera the stocking rate depends on tree cover. Royal Decree 4/2014 allows no more than 0.25 pigs per hectare where trees cover 10% of the ground or less, and up to 1.25 where they cover over 35%. Those limits give the areas shown.
The gap runs from one to several tens of thousands. That says nothing against indoor farming, which feeds most of the population and follows demanding rules. It is a different order of magnitude, and it explains much of the Iberico ham price when the ham is acorn-fed.
The montanera is the last stage of rearing, spent under the oaks while the acorns fall. In law it lasts more than 60 days, and in that time the pig has to gain at least 46 kg from what the dehesa offers, without any supplementary feed (Royal Decree 4/2014, articles 3 and 6). What it finds to eat there is the subject of our article on what Iberico pigs eat. A cebo de campo pig also lives outdoors, on an extensive farm or in intensive open-air rearing, and it is fed mainly on cereals. The seal that tells these pigs apart on a label is explained in serrano vs Iberico ham.
That space is about more than comfort. A pig has few working sweat glands, so sweating does little to cool it down. It manages its temperature through behaviour instead, by looking for shade and wallowing in mud, and under the oaks it can do both. That is a physiological constraint, not a preference.
Those figures are the law's. The farm our pieces come from is in the Salamanca dehesa, and we go there every season. The montanera on that farm runs at roughly one hectare per animal, ten thousand square metres each. Set that against the table above.
The plots mix holm oaks and cork oaks. Tree cover changes from one plot to the next, and the land looks different again from one season to another. That is exactly why the standard works with a range instead of a single figure.
There is a large watering point and natural shelter. The farm is fully equipped and makes its own feed mix for the months outside the montanera. It is not certified organic, and we will not present it as if it were.
We will say no more about it, on purpose. The farm belongs to a producer we work with, and the rest is theirs to tell.
The five freedoms, and what they are worth
They come up the moment anyone mentions animal welfare. The British Farm Animal Welfare Council set them out in 1979, following the Brambell report of 1965. They are freedom from hunger and thirst, from discomfort, from pain, injury and disease, and from fear and distress, along with the freedom to express normal behaviour.
Two points almost nobody makes. The framework has no binding force in the European Union, where the legal obligations come from directive 98/58/EC, and that directive does not mention the five freedoms. The council that wrote them has also been called the Animal Welfare Committee since 2019.
None of this makes them less useful as a way of looking at a farm. It does mean that “we respect the five freedoms” is a statement nobody certifies.
Four things we will not say
We will not say the dehesa is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is not, and it is not on Spain's tentative list either. Its real status, further down this page, is solid enough.
Nor will we call it a carbon sink. Published measurements from an instrumented site in Extremadura, taken between 2016 and 2023, show the control plot as a net source of CO₂. Its soils store carbon, and storing carbon is a different thing from absorbing more of it every year.
We leave out the idea that a natural diet strengthens the animals' immune system. The literature on the subject is inconsistent and does not support it.
And we will not claim that the ailments of intensive farming are absent here. No comparative study shows it, and on joint disorders the only one available points the other way. Space does not protect an animal from everything.
What the dehesa gives
Acorn-fed 100% Iberico ham from the Salamanca dehesa, €24.90 for 80 g
The pigs finish their fattening under the oaks, in montanera. That diet and that space make the difference in taste, and in the price. Hand-carved, cured 44 to 48 months.
5,0 · 8 reviews
24,90€
Shipped from Spain · free shipping over €89.90
What the dehesa does to the land
On biodiversity, the figures that hold up are more modest than the ones going around, and still telling. The regional government of Andalusia counts around sixty breeding bird species in its dehesas, more than twenty mammal species and as many reptiles and amphibians. Among the birds are the Spanish imperial eagle, which is endangered, and the black stork.
The annual pastures of the dehesa are among the richest in the world for herbaceous plants. The Libro Verde puts it at more than seventy species per square metre. That is a density, not a total, and it is why the figure stands out.
Public authorities recognise what grazing does against wildfire. Since 2005 the regional government of Andalusia has run a network of firebreaks kept clear by livestock. As they graze, the animals bring down the fuel load and break up the vegetation, and that slows a fire's spread. The network covers wooded areas well beyond the dehesa, but the principle is the same.
One last point, since you often read that dehesa oaks are thousands of years old. A holm oak can live for several centuries. A cork oak lives around a hundred and seventy years and can be stripped of its bark some fifteen times in its life. On the scale of a farm, that is already a long time.
Its real protection status
The dehesa is a habitat of Community interest under the Habitats Directive, code 6310, “dehesas with evergreen Quercus”. Spain holds more than three quarters of it and Portugal a sixth. That protection is European, and it binds the member states.
It also lies at the heart of three biosphere reserves under the UNESCO MAB programme. Dehesas de Sierra Morena was designated in 2002 over 424,400 hectares, Monfragüe followed in 2003 and La Siberia in 2019.
Official reports are less keen to dwell on one thing. The conservation status of this habitat is assessed as unfavourable and getting worse in the Mediterranean region. Ageing trees, a lack of regeneration and disease pressure on the oaks are all documented. An acorn-fed ham depends on a place in worse health than the story suggests.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Why the dehesa needs to be farmed
That is the paradox of the dehesa. It is easy to picture a wild place that farming should keep away from. The dehesa was made by grazing, and once the animals stop grazing it, it closes over or falls into decline.
So the dehesa holds up without any exaggeration. It needs no world label and no made-up virtues for the animals' health. Up to four hectares per pig and a habitat protected across Europe are argument enough. The dehesa, for its part, needs its herds to hold together.
Taste it yourself
Products mentioned in this article
Shipped within 48 h from Salamanca · Free shipping from €89.90
5,0 · 8 reviews
Cured 44 to 48 months, hand carved, 80 g vacuum pack.
24,90€
4,6 · 5 reviews
Cured 32 to 36 months, sliced, 80 g vacuum pack.
15,90€
Whole 7 to 8 kg ham, cured 44 to 48 months.
649,90€
Frequently asked questions
Is the dehesa a UNESCO World Heritage site?
No, and it is not on Spain's tentative list either. It does lie at the heart of three biosphere reserves under the UNESCO MAB programme, Dehesas de Sierra Morena among them. The European Union also protects it as habitat 6310.
How much space does an Iberico pig have during the montanera?
Spanish rules allow 0.25 to 1.25 pigs per hectare depending on tree cover, which gives each animal 8,000 to 40,000 m². By comparison, the European directive requires 0.65 m² for a pig of 85 to 110 kg kept indoors.
What are the five freedoms of animal welfare?
Freedom from hunger and thirst, from discomfort, from pain, injury and disease, and from fear and distress, along with the freedom to express normal behaviour. They were set out in the United Kingdom in 1979. They have no binding force in the European Union, where directive 98/58/EC applies.
How large is the dehesa?
Around 3.5 million hectares in Spain, across 1,300 municipalities. Most of it lies in Extremadura, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León. The Portuguese montado adds close to another million hectares.
Can a dehesa farm be certified organic?
Yes, but each farm has to apply for it, and nothing obliges it to. Farming in a dehesa does not make a farm organic. The European organic regulation bans the preventive use of antibiotics. A sick animal can still be treated, with only what it needs and twice the usual withdrawal period.
Sources
- The definition, surface areas and plant richness come from the Libro Verde de la Dehesa y el Montado. Hacia una Estrategia Ibérica de gestión, version of 20 May 2010, coordinated by Fernando Pulido and Álvaro Picardo. It is the Spanish scientific consensus document and draws on Ministry of Agriculture data. The montado surface area comes from the sixth Portuguese national forest inventory.
- Stocking densities come from directive 2008/120/EC, which codifies the earlier directives transposed in Spain by Royal Decree 1135/2002, and from Royal Decree 4/2014 for the montanera, cebo de campo and cebo (articles 6 to 8 and the annex).
- The protection status comes from the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC, with the habitat 6310 factsheet and the Article 17 reporting, and from the biosphere reserve records of the UNESCO MAB programme.
- The five freedoms are described in the Farm Animal Welfare Council report of 2009. The EU rules are in directive 98/58/EC.
- Pig thermoregulation comes from Contreras-Jodar, Escribano, Cerón et al., Reducing Stocking Densities and Using Cooling Systems for More Adapted Pigs to High Temperatures When Reared in Intensive Conditions, Animals, 2023. Pigs have few functional sweat glands and, outdoors, cope with heat by seeking shade and wallowing in mud.
- Biodiversity figures come from the regional government of Andalusia and the LIFE BioDehesa project of the University of Córdoba, and the grazed firebreaks from the Junta de Andalucía. The carbon balance comes from Nadolski, El-Madany, Nelson et al., Altered seasonal sensitivity of net ecosystem exchange to controls driven by nutrient balances in a semi-arid savanna, Biogeosciences, 2025, on the Majadas de Tiétar dehesa in Extremadura, and from Uribe, Inclán, Hernando et al., Grazing, tilling and canopy effects on carbon dioxide fluxes in a Spanish dehesa, Agroforestry Systems, 2015. The history comes from Martín Vicente and Fernández Alés, Long Term Persistence of Dehesas. Evidences from History, Agroforestry Systems, 2006.
- What we say about the farm we source from comes from our own visits, in every season of the year.
- All of these sources were reread on 25 August 2026. Claims we could not source were removed, and the article says which ones.
Read next
- What Iberico pigs eat, and why it changes the taste of the ham
- The best pig in the world, and what the texts say about the breeds
- How Iberico ham is made, stage by stage
- How to choose Iberico ham, a guide in four questions
Written by
Valentin & Pablo
Founders of LOLO Jamón
We select our pieces in the drying cellars of the Salamanca dehesa, and we filmed a full montanera season for our documentary Viva España.
The taste of a hectare per pig
Acorn-fed 100% Iberico hams and shoulders with the black seal, from the Salamanca dehesa. As a whole piece, or in 80 g packs, hand-carved for the ham and sliced for the shoulder.
The cebo de campo ham range is here too · free shipping over €89.90
Leave a comment
This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.