We celebrated another Earth Day. By the way, let's look at some more recent dynamics in rural space. In the last century, the dynamics of the agro-rural space went through a succession of occupation and use cycles.
The peasant cycle (the field), the agrarian cycle (the exploitation), the industrial cycle (the factory), the biotechnological cycle (the laboratory), the agroecological cycle (the agroecosystem).
In the beginning, nature imposed its own rhythms. Today, agriculture takes place without soil, sun and people. Today, agro-rural cycles, via the dominant model of chemical-mechanical-genetic nature (QMG), are shortening their umbilical relationship with the ecosystem of origin, that is, the derived industrial and biotechnological productivity is increasingly dispensed with more primary productivity and the relationship between agrarian values and natural values is increasingly artificial.
Cutting this umbilical relationship not only endangers the most fundamental resources, genetic resources, but also the most symbolic resources, landscape resources. Let's look at some aspects of this dynamics of the agro-rural space.
The actors and the system and their conflicts of interest
In the current situation, in the midst of a pandemic, we are witnessing an accelerated change in the relationship of forces in the rural world. As one can easily imagine, the values related to spatial planning, multiple use and accessibility to the agro-rural space often come into a collision course with the attempt to privatize some ongoing ruralization processes. In presence, we have several types of relevant economic actors or agents. Let's look at our case.
First, traditional micro and small-scale agriculture, in the context of a subsistence economy and operating according to different logics of proximity, for example, local markets and short commercialization circuits.
Second, a recent inorganic group driven by diffuse interests, itself in search of social valuation and public recognition; this is a typology of emerging demand around types of tourism in rural areas (TER), biological products (BIO), recreational services (SER) and so-called products (DOP), almost always a mix of these offers.
Thirdly, a group of financially powerful promoters, many of them investment funds, almost always with a real estate vocation and, almost always, taking advantage of the financial weaknesses of Portuguese agriculture and forestry.
I'm talking, for example, about the leasing and purchase of medium and large properties by business groups, national and foreign, aimed at exporting productions under intensive and super intensive production, but also investments in energy, hunting and tourist in rural areas that require large capitalization.
Fourthly, agro-tourism investments of great heritage and landscape value, almost always located in terroirs of recognized reputation, generally under the designation of farms, manors or estates.
Fifthly, agro-industrial companies are already vertical, whether in the form of cooperatives, producers' organizations, producers' clubs or any type of agriculture under contract.
Having arrived here, different processes of ruralization are underway, each in its own way, as many processes of privatization of the rural public space and, therefore, a source of many new conflicts of interest.
Here are the main ones: real estate renting, industrial afforestation of agricultural land, extensive conservation of natural resources, residentialization and touristification of agro-rural space, energization of renewable resources, intensive precision regeneration, cinegetization of agroforestry resources, the outsourcing of space for pedagogical, recreational and therapeutic purposes.
The new rural economy in the making
In the next decade, great changes in the dynamics of the agro-rural space are coming. The climate, energy, ecological and digital transitions call for more research, more regulation and more territorial culture from the new rural economy.
Indeed, agroecological culture is not enough to promote agroecosystems, it is essential to have a culture of territories that, accepting the primacy of mobility, does not contribute to destroying the territory, because without a culture of identity, the territory becomes an economic, flat, neutral space , normalized. It is the law of the greatest scale and the least cost that dominates. The law of the flat world.
It is necessary to contravene the law of the flat world. The territories' identity and symbolic culture, their imaginaries, mysteries, memories and promises, is what saves small local and regional economies, because it creates specific preferences and corresponding offers.
The cultural barrier and dedicated agroecological research are therefore our natural barriers, those that protect our “reason for being”. At the same time, as soil, water and climate become rarer and more aggressive and knowledge and technologies more abundant, a new rural economy will emerge made up of precision agriculture, circular economy, regenerative agriculture and services. of ecosystem.
In this emerging rural economy, the smart territories green plan will be the main distinguishing sign. In the plan, biophysical operators will be the new central places:
– In buildings: green roofs, green walls, gardens and yards, wooded terraces,
– On the street: tree-lined sidewalks, bicycle paths, multiple-use streets, rehabilitation of water lines,
– In the neighbourhood: renewable energy production communities, climate bioregulation, urban gardens, urban forests and multifunctional groves, public places, parks and gardens,
– In the city: experimentation in vertical agriculture, bio-purifying lakes and urban composting, the network of cycle paths, the intermodality of transport, the integration of networks, the collection of rainwater,
– In the municipality: inter-municipal green corridors, inter-municipal mobility, urban and peri-urban agricultural parks for local food supply, the construction of agro-ecological, recreational and therapeutic amenities, the rehabilitation of ecosystems and the promotion of their services.
In the new rural economy in formation, the work program for the near future is very promising. The general objectives are as follows:
– Increase the production of clean traceable goods;
– Increase the provision of internalities (reduction of external inputs);
– Increase the provision of positive externalities on the environment;
– Increase the linkage effects of the local production system;
– Increase the capillarity effects on the surrounding territories;
– Increase the provision of ecosystem services;
– Increase the production of social and symbolic capital.
These objectives will be animated by the vectors of collective intelligence that inform the new rural economy in formation:
– The green or ecological vector: a very varied range of agricultures whose green intensity must be in accordance with their ecological gradient;
– The energy vector: a very varied range of agricultures whose energy intensity should be in accordance with the principles of a zero carbon economy, in order to generate green credits for agriculture;
– The biotechnological vector: a very varied range of agricultures whose biotechnological intensity must be in accordance with the principles of precaution and prudence, as we will be able to witness the arrival of a transgenic seed that attacks an already disadvantaged territory as well as the introduction of an agroecosystemic innovation that recovers and regenerates agricultural soils that were thought to be lost forever;
– The recreational vector: a very varied range of recreational agricultures whose intensity should be in accordance with a new mapping of recreational and leisure territories in rural areas; differentiation and promotion of new audiences and territorial planning that corresponds to these expectations are the two main tasks;
– The vector of ecosystem services: a very varied range of service agricultures whose provision of goods and services can be classified into four broad categories: productive, activity support, activity regulation and sociocultural comfort.
Final Notes
Contrary to what we have been taught for many decades in mainstream schools of thought, rurality is not definitely out of date. Henceforth, rurality is a way of life, in symbiosis with nature, not an exclusive way of production. It is no longer related to a productive system, it has become a cultural mode par excellence.
The advent of the immaterial and collaborative economy is therefore a great opportunity for conventional material value chains. It is an opportunity for the poorest regions in material resources.
UNESCO's intangible heritage appeals are a good example of this, as they further expand the quantity and quality of territorial distinctive signs available.
The big question that remains unresolved is the quality of social capital, that is, the emergence of network-actors capable of reconciling “order with intelligence and imagination” for the benefit of the most disadvantaged rural territories.
In this context, it is imperative that we find a new social contract for agriculture and its agroecosystems within the framework of local productive systems and the landscape units in which they are integrated. The local and regional agricultures we are talking about must be financed by a combination of “market, transfer and contract”.
Designing and configuring this financing in three dimensions is not an easy task, but in it lies the secret of the sustainability of these local and regional agricultures.
The rural world is, today, a game of shadows and a crossroads where perceptions and representations of exchanged worlds intersect.
Each of these representations creates its truth, its propaganda arsenal, simplistic ideas and blurred images about the rural world.
On the other hand, it is these same representations, practical and theoretical, that create new demands and emerging markets that cross the countryside in all directions. The change is undeniable, the rural space is no longer a producer-space to be a produced-space.
Every day, the media send us these urban incursions in rural areas, as brilliant success stories, duly accompanied by advertising elements that aim to convey the image of fashion. Henceforth, green, eco and bio will pass all the mistakes and all the promises of the rural world.
Author António Covas is a Retired Full Professor at the University of Algarve
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