Increasing the amount of farmland in the Iberian Peninsula at the expense of ranches?

First of all, let's just assume that the Peninsula is united sometime before 1520 because Miguel or Afonso survive their untimely deaths, just to make this a bit easier.

The peninsula has always been full of land used for livestock farming, however that has the problem of eroding the little amount of arable soil there is and destroying vegetation, the latter of which only helps to accentuate certain regions lack of rainfall.
So, what sort of situation would be needed for a majority of those pastures to be replaced with land for farming?
 
I'm no expert on the suitability of Spanish soil for agriculture, but I think the key issue is that the Spanish merina wool trade was put under monarchical oversight via the monopolistic Mesta guild by the 16thC. Payments from the guild were made directly to the Crown of Castile - so no need to go to the Cortes for an increase in subsidy; no need to bother with shaking money out of unwilling burghers or nobles. Naturally in a dispute between Mesta and agriculture, the Mesta won: a decree in 1501 declared that all land once used by the Mesta for grazing had to be kept for pasturage.

The dominance of the wool trade was not entirely the fault of the monarchy - the Castilian wool trade was indeed a major part of the economy from the 14thC onwards, and partly explains why that country eventually leapfrogged Aragon in terms of economy.

Furthermore, there was the issue of agricultural improvements such as irrigation and river-dredging. These were difficult enough when Castile had to solely deal with the powerful landed magnates: add to this competing cities (Tagus dredging threatened Seville's dominance in favor of Lisbon, so they petitioned the king to stop it, even though it retarded Toledo's growth), separate currency/judicial systems between Aragon, Castile and Portugal, and massive urban migration as peasants fled oppressive taxation, and you have a situation where Castilian monarchs have every incentive to take the easy way out by privileging the woollen trade.

A potential scenario where farmland is prioritized over pasturage could be a situation where the Mesta comes under Crown control, but nobles remain influential in Toledo, rather than exiled to the countryside. Nobles would see that granting pasturage rights to the Mesta would only strengthen Crown resources against them, and thus they would have incentive to keep their lands farmed rather than as pasture.
 
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