We return to the theme of the Mediterranean Diet, to mention some problems related to its territorial support network.
As we know, the structuring of the Algarve economy in the last half century, at least, has taken place along four parallel lines:
– The coastline that includes the coast and the protected landscape area of the Ria Formosa;
– The urban line that accompanies the National Road (EN) 125 and which includes the urban centers around it, as well as the so-called peri-urban agriculture, which is today, to a large extent, intensive and forced agriculture;
– The barrocal line, from the more traditional rural Algarve, which follows, for example, the EN270 and which includes traditional Algarve agriculture, in particular the so-called traditional dryland orchard;
– The mountain range that accompanies, for example, the EN124 and EN2 and which includes forestry and forest-derived products, the cork oak economy as well as the hunting economy.
Recent history is all too well known. Due to the growing hegemony of the real estate economy, in its various tourist and residential modalities, the space between the coastline and the EN125 line was being captured for the real estate-tourist activity, resulting in the fragmentation of rustic property, the profusion equipment and infrastructure and, therefore, the economic unfeasibility of many traditional farms, which had multifunctional characteristics suited to the Algarve's Mediterranean ecosystem.
This pulverization of the rustic property and the traditional agricultural exploitation coincided, on the one hand, with the withering of the regional associative and cooperative movement and, on the other, with the emergence of a very heterogeneous commercial sector, from which commercial surfaces emerge, of all kinds. dimensions, which imposed stricter production and marketing rules on the region's agri-food economy.
The functioning model of the regional economy
The speed of implementation of the “new hegemonic model of regional business” did not leave time to design and implement a real policy of agricultural and rural development in the region, despite the volume of aid that came through the CAP. Suffice it to say that there is no agriculture and farmers association in the region worthy of the name.
For this panorama to be more complete, we must also bring together the intermediary commercial agent who, in the interstices of the small local economy, continued to do business opportunities, taking advantage of the evident financial and commercial weaknesses of family farming, dominant in traditional rural areas. Algarve.
Finally, there is the disorganization of the local labor market, as a result of the seasonality of the tourist market, which is more aggressive and more attractive.
This unequal relationship, economic and commercial, but also interprofessional and contractual, led to a decapitalization of family farming in the Algarve and, over time, to its retreat to the informal economy and even to the abandonment of many small properties, at the same time which substantially reduced its landscape and ecosystem relationship with the region's local natural resources.
And all this without prejudice, of course, to some islands of agricultural modernization, especially in the horticultural and citrus sectors.
The four parallel lines we referred to created, in their interstices, small parallel economies that barely communicated with each other. The lack of cross-linking of these four segments of the Algarve economy and the unequal relationship between the associative production sector and the commercial and retail business sector gave rise to a very vulnerable regional agrarian economy and a rural economy very sensitive to these strong movements of social and territorial disruption.
The most obvious signs are in sight:
– Agricultural land waiting for urban development;
– The disorganization of traditional rural labor markets in the Algarve, exchanged for seasonal work in the most dynamic sectors;
– Intensive and forced agriculture, where intergenerational family work, pluriactivity and multi-income predominate, but with little associative vocation;
– Local production chains, short and with low added value, are crushed by commercial margins;
– A large part of the local economy depends on marketing channels that are in the hands of transport intermediaries;
– The degradation of the local and regional intangible rural heritage, for example, from the Mediterranean landscape to the rural architecture of the Algarve's Barrocal Mountains and the abandonment of many rustic properties and small family farms.
What to do in this context and under these circumstances?
– Firstly, to open crossing points between these four parallel lines of the Algarve economy, creating, through this fertilization, a new territorial intelligence;
– Second, create value chains in which the traditional activities of the Algarve economy are penetrated by the arts and culture, that is, making patrimonialization, material and immaterial, a new source of wealth, through creative and cultural activities;
– Thirdly, innovate and create a new line of “structured products and services”, with bolder product design and marketing;
– Finally, to disseminate these contextual benefits through the reticulation of the support points of a support network for the Mediterranean Diet, whether territorial micro-networks, thematic networks or network territories with more muscle and nervous system.
Let us discuss, for now, this last aspect, the territorial support network of the Mediterranean diet.
A territorial support network of the Mediterranean Diet
With regard to the practical application of an inventory, safeguard and promotion plan for the Mediterranean Diet, it is essential to build a support network for the Mediterranean diet, which can take on various geometries and natures, from a very circumscribed local micro-network, to a thematic network and to a wider network territory.
A micro-network may be justified in rescuing a “lost seed or an indigenous product” in danger of extinction, which, however, may have extraordinary scientific and symbolic value for the plan to safeguard the Mediterranean diet.
The thematic network is a network on the inventory and classification of “food and cultural practices and lifestyles” that are most representative of the Mediterranean Diet and which can be collected in various parts of the country.
A territorial network is a geographically delimited network, which, in the first instance, has its origin in the political and cultural community of the municipality of Tavira, leader of the candidacy, but which can be extended to other adjacent or distant Algarve municipalities that make up with it a “vertical territory”, that is, a territory whose cut is representative of the various sociocultural strata that extend from the sea to the mountains.
In the case of the thematic network, we are convinced that the inventory and classification of food practices (from local biodiversity to food preparation) and lifestyles (from family structure to forms of conviviality, sociability and festivity) will deserve privileged treatment.
In this regard, we know that preparatory work of an operational nature is already underway, through technical-scientific committees that constitute a kind of actor-network of the Mediterranean Diet, and, as soon as possible, because the safeguard plan will be evaluated in the next four years in 2018.
In the second case, the territorial network, we are convinced that two lines of approach can be considered, first and second priority.
The first line corresponds to the municipality of Tavira, which is, in the first instance, the face of the community representing the Portuguese part of the candidacy.
In this sense, the election of the Agricultural Station of Tavira as the seat of the future Center for the Study of the Mediterranean Diet would be an excellent choice to celebrate the start of the plan to safeguard and promote the Mediterranean Diet, especially as the Agricultural Station of Tavira has an estate of fruit and vegetable varieties, which will be, not only symbolically, but above all in terms of local and regional biodiversity, an excellent starting point for the launch and promotion of the Mediterranean Diet.
Moreover, this first priority is perfectly compatible with micro-networks for safeguarding lost seeds and native species.
With regard to the second line of approach to the territorial network, following the criterion of "representative vertical councils", we are convinced that, in a first approximation, one of the most relevant areas for this purpose is the one found at the intersection and in the area of influence of the national roads N124, N2 and N270.
Therefore, the first experimental support network of the Mediterranean Diet could include the parishes of Martinlongo, Cachopo, Barranco do Velho and Querença along the N124, Ameixial, again Barranco do Velho and Alportel along the N2, and Alportel again, Santa Catarina and Santa Luzia/Barril along the N270.
In the extension of these lines, we could also add the typical villages of the barrocal, such as Alte, Salir and União das Freguesias de Querença, Tor and Benafim.
I mean, we would be electing a good part of Serra do Caldeirão for this purpose, but also electing an area especially affected by the great summer fires, where the climate risk is high and where, therefore, all the “practices food and cultural” struggle selflessly for their survival.
Some risks associated with the Mediterranean Diet
In the Algarve, as we know, a lot of activity depends on the strategy followed and pursued by the tourism/leisure industry, in a broad sense.
In other words, the operating conditions at low density, which represents the majority of the region's territory, are only possible if tourism/leisure itself is polynuclear and crosslinks its internal growth.
In other words, tourism/leisure is the driving sector, one of the few with enough capital to make a strategic incursion into the interior of the Algarve, creating multifunctional investment and multipurpose ventures that reconfigure the territory and generate small agglomeration economies around you.
It should do this for reasons of economic rationality and not for mere reasons of circumstance or opportunity, as we are convinced that the future of the tourism/leisure industry also depends on the diversification that it is able to print on the continuous meadow-barrocal-serra, in a “vertical economy” line we referred to earlier.
In this sense, a "vertical economy" is a kind of "interior architecture" that considers and works together on infrastructure, equipment, ecological corridors, biophysical engineering, landscape amenities, agglomeration and reticulation economies, cargo and the orderly management of tourist flows to the interior.
If the network actors of this vertical economy do not live up to their responsibilities, the tourism/leisure industry will most likely continue to unbalance the region, while regional and local programs, supposedly developmental, will have difficulty in escape from more redistributive and even welfare applications.
Debating rural development in the Algarve interior and mountains is to reflect on the future of two-thirds of the Algarve's territory, it is to prevent the region from a possible asymmetric shock, which, from one moment to the next, can erupt and devastate the coastal economy, it is giving depth to the coast and the countryside, is to take advantage of territories in a preventive state, it is, after all, to rethink the deep identity of the Algarve, at a time when “identity fashions are in fashion”.
It is here that, in the equation of this vertical economy that unites coastline-campina-barocal-mountain, the Mediterranean Diet appears with a factor of reunification and territorial appeal.
Is the Mediterranean Diet a strong enough resilient focus capable of counteracting the various types of risks that already affect the Algarve interior today?
The cultural, heritage, natural and landscape values of the rural world are an invaluable public good whose fragility and vulnerability must be countered at all costs.
Desertification, prolonged droughts, forest fires, the degradation of future natural reserves, are an open wound in the agro-rural ecosystems of the Algarve region.
To what extent can the Mediterranean Diet contribute to counteracting the climatic and environmental risks associated with the depopulation of these territories?
The second type of risk that can seriously affect the Mediterranean Diet has to do with rejuvenation and generational succession, that is, with the social capital available today and the social capital available in the near future.
It is essential to carry out some investigative work in the field of the territorial support network that we suggest here and carry out a pre-qualification of the actors available for this purpose.
Parish councils can be, in the first instance, an interesting starting point, but other existing associative structures can act as animators of the points of the network.
Another point of the network of great interest, in terms of social capital, are all the initiatives that can involve young people coming from professional and higher technical schools in the region.
Another type of risk associated with the Mediterranean Diet is related to the good practices imposed by the respective “specifications book” and, as well, the different types of certification and control that can cause great damage to micro and small local agriculture.
It is important to remember, once again, that the Mediterranean Diet is an international appeal that is not just a “food culture of scarcity and hostile nature”, it is also a lifestyle and an anthropology of everyday life. A merely productivist and economicist approach to DM can have counterproductive effects and negative impacts on family and artisanal modes of production.
Finally, a final risk associated with the Mediterranean Diet is related to its image policy, or its brand image, and the marketing plan that is deemed most appropriate, that is, with the possibility of, in the near future, the Diet Mediterranean appear transvestite of tourist products and services of very dubious taste and common sense.
If the brand image of the Mediterranean Diet is confused with a succession of more or less “touristified” events, then the risk of a “kitch diet” will lurk at all times.
Final grade
In conclusion, the appellation “Mediterranean Diet, intangible heritage of humanity” is a unique opportunity to carry out the upgrade of the Algarve's local and regional economy, in particular the promotion of the Algarve's Barrocal economy and the mountain economy.
It serves, however, as a warning to say that a restrained and moderate expectation must be placed on such a wish.
For this purpose, the region urgently needs, in terms of territorial micro-geoeconomics and network territories, to carry out an experimental trial, a thematic and territorial network, which can sow the first seeds of what will be, in the near future, a policy certification of the Mediterranean diet.
This is a far-reaching challenge and an invaluable commons for the country and Algarve region.
Let us remember, by the way, that the first test, the evaluation of the safeguard plan, will be ahead of us already in 2018.
Still open is the possibility of delimiting a territorial network to test, in the concrete terrain of the Algarve region, the “charges and specifications” of this prestigious appeal so bearer of the future.
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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