Agroecology and landscape

Agroecologia e paesaggio

The evolution of the agricultural landscape has been affected, over the centuries, by the particular human approach to the things of the earth and its management and cultivation, determining an identity that is studied above all in the historical evolutions of the crops that have led to the current appearance.
Furthermore, the different morphological and pedoclimatic conditions, and the original distribution of the subsequently domesticated species, have influenced production organizations and the evolution of landscapes.
However, the landscape is affected, as is obvious, by the experiences acquired and by the scientific and technical developments that, especially in recent centuries, have characterized human history.
In this sense, the so-called agricultural revolutions have had a profound impact on agricultural landscapes, however also involving the urban planning organizations of inhabited centres.
From Ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley (around 4,000-1,500 BC), up to the Green Revolution (starting from the mid-20th century), the relationship between humanity and territory has undergone profound evolutions that have significantly affected agricultural landscapes.
There is, therefore, a close relationship between the agricultural system and the agricultural landscape, so much so that, with the advent of modern agriculture, promoting specialized crops and livestock and, often, monoculture, agricultural landscapes have undergone notable changes and transformations.
Furthermore, the same concepts and definition of “landscape” are complex topics to describe and circumscribe, also because it is a vision that has undergone a profound evolution over time, so it is necessary to provide some fundamental coordinates that help us to give it a common sense. and accomplished.
This is because, in this historical phase, we are transitioning from the anthropocentric vision of the world, in which man was the center of observation and domination, to the ecological and therefore ecocentric one, in which man is part of a whole. In this new vision the landscape is no longer external to man but man is inside it and, obviously, all this transforms the entire perspective and possible interactions.
This paradigm shift is dictated, as we will see later, by the effects that all the discoveries, largely already in the last century, are giving to the dynamics of the very perception of the reality that surrounds us.
In this change we must therefore descend “from the Olympus of the gods” to take on a new vision. The lack of this vision has led us, in fact, to an interaction with the landscape and its ecosystems, which has produced urban areas increasingly concentrated in large cities and, unfortunately, to the depopulation and degradation of internal areas and small inhabited centers and to the loss, often, of the identity of entire landscapes. The responsibility lies with a misreading of the functionality of ecosystems, both on a large scale and in detail.
In fact, we know that every cell of the territory responds to certain balances, without the knowledge of which it tends to degrade, to generate rates of increasing entropy, which manifest themselves with increasingly poorer forms of energy, both from an ecological and human point of view. This generates loss of biodiversity, ecological erosion, cultural and social degradation and finally, at a social level, misery and poverty. If we were to define what poverty is, according to this perspective, we could define it as the diminished human ability to interact and coexist with the laws of nature and, therefore, to integrate with the natural landscape.
Well, by applying energy balances to the management of ecosystems, of which agriculture is a predominant part with around 80% of the occupied surface, we have already highlighted how intensive agricultural practices, for example, have a lower yield than those traditional; to be clear, those prior to the Treaty of Rome and the so-called Green Revolution. This model can then be translated to all human activities. According to Jeremy Rifkin, this trend is rapidly increasing (Rifkin J. and Howard T. 2000) precisely because production models: agriculture, industry, services, and so on have moved away from the canons of energy efficiency, for respect only market and not ecological needs.
To understand this statement, let’s return for a moment to the efficiency of production models in one of the sectors that affects, in particular, the landscape and therefore the agro-forestry-pastoral system. This system is in short, as mentioned, a dissipative system. When we manage a farm, a forest or an ecosystem, we do nothing but draw, especially from solar and subsoil energies, to transform them into food energy or other ecosystem services, so when we produce a tomato or an ear of wheat In fact, we accumulate these energies in order to make them usable for a secondary energetic process, which is human nutrition.
We have seen that, simplifying the concepts, which are never ideal, we can state that this process can occur in two main ways: either according to closed thermodynamic systems or through open thermodynamic systems. In the first case the energies of the process are free to flow and be exchanged, while the masses must move as little as possible and in any case with short displacements. In the second case, i.e. in open thermodynamic systems, both masses and energies are free to move without rules. It is evident that the more open our social and productive system is, the lower the overall efficiency of the process. Today most of the production systems, whether agricultural or not, especially those of Western industrialization, are of the open type and therefore very low yield.
In economics the former are circular systems and the latter linear.
But there is a second aspect: in nature the system, in order to perform at its best, must necessarily increase the complexity of its structure (according to an order of energetic reciprocity) by decreasing its entropy. The system, simply put, must biodiversify. In nature we can therefore find models of negative entropy (the so-called negentropy) which, locally, allows the most closed and biodiversified thermodynamic systems to have the highest energy yield (Prigogine I., Nicolis G. 1982).
From the application of these concepts we can derive a series of considerations that allow us to understand a succession of dynamics that would otherwise be complex to observe and which, inevitably, affect the concept and evolution of the landscape.
The first reflection is of a territorial nature. All systems, whether it is a farm, a forest or a city, respond to these laws: they are all dissipative structures. Whenever our dissipative system reconverts the energies poorly or poorly, the greater energy received compared to that transformed results in a production of entropy which is a degraded form of energy, no longer transformable and which is one of the fundamental factors of the so-called global warming.
The second reflection, which is consequent, is of a human nature: we are talking about social entropy. In order to manage these inefficient energy models, the community must create a series of increasingly complex feedbacks (structures, flows, systems, markets, bureaucracies, and so on) that absorb further amounts of energy. In the book Entropia (1982), by Jeremy Rifkin, this process is seen, if the necessary remedies are not put in place, as a function of no return. Just like in chemical equilibrium, when the ratio between reactants and products is excessively unbalanced, risking no longer being able to balance the equation.
Thus, to remedy these inconsistencies and operate in the presence of converging disciplines, in the most orthodox sense of landscape evolution, inseparable from careful territorial planning, we must move towards the identification of geographical macro-areas which take the name of Bioregions. These areas, hypothesized for the first time in the 1960s by Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, are the synthesis of those ethical, political and ideological principles connected to the ecosystem that characterizes them. According to Thomas Rebb, bioregionalism is that “form of decentralized human organization which, by aiming to maintain the integrity of biological processes, life formations and geographical formations specific to the bioregion, helps the material and spiritual development of the human communities that inhabit it ”.
It is clear that it is an approach to the concept of landscape, planning, land management, tourist flows, and so on, which moves on a much more complex level.
The consequences of such an approach have clear ecological and social repercussions: in this way the relationships between production and use will be shortened, to the advantage of more balanced, less concentrated and energy-intensive urban planning systems, and with long-lasting social, ecological and energy systems, where man will find greater synchrony with the natural landscape, also contributing to its restoration.
If, however, we continue to apply logic and policies in the direction of open thermodynamic systems, we will witness the unstoppable trend of growth of megacities, of the progressive impoverishment and degradation of the suburbs, with very unstable social, ecological and energy systems of short historical duration.
Even the agricultural landscape, the result, as mentioned, of a thousand-year history, has recently undergone a notable transformation even if “territorial ruins” still remain as evidence of this.
For this reason, an interdisciplinary and integrated methodological model is necessary for the mapping and cataloging of traditional agricultural landscapes (Barbera G. et al. 2014), in order to carry out careful territorial planning and management and valorise traditional Italian landscapes where, Above all, arboriculture, with its centuries-old diffusion techniques, has determined a large part of the landscapes as we see and experience them today.
In this sense, agroforestry techniques can also play an important role in the ecological and landscape restoration, recovery and revaluation of the agricultural landscape.
Key steps to harnessing agroforestry for sustainable landscape management include:
– the transition to a “science of agroforestry sustainability”;
– understand the trajectories, histories and local traditions of land use;
– strengthening agroforestry for benefits on a landscape scale;
– promote the multiple economic, environmental, social and cultural values of agroforestry;
– promote inclusive forms of landscape governance;
– support the innovation process of the analysis and design of the agroforestry system.
This method allows agroforestry and sustainable landscape management to implement key strategies for the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in global productive landscapes (Plieninger et al. 2020).
In this sense, the advent of agroecology can contribute to regenerating and recovering agricultural landscapes as this discipline offers an approach that aims to create sustainable, ecologically balanced and economically valid systems, through the transfer of the principles of ecology to agriculture. Thus agroecological principles can directly influence the shape and configuration of the agricultural landscape. Because agroecology promotes the sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity, it can lead to a change in the appearance of landscapes themselves. For example, agroecology promotes crop diversification, the use of less invasive cultivation techniques, the promotion of biodiversity and the reduction of the use of synthetic chemicals. These changes can translate not only into a more varied agricultural landscape, with more natural habitats and a greater presence of flora and fauna but, at the same time, with forms of recovery of natural areas more pleasant to human experience.
Furthermore, agroecology encourages the participation of local communities and promotes agricultural practices that respect and enhance the cultural and historical characteristics of a specific territory. This can influence agricultural landscape planning, for example, through the adoption of traditional agricultural techniques or the promotion of agricultural systems strongly linked to local characteristics.
For its part, the landscape influences agroecology. Indeed, it is precisely agroecology that behaves like a liquid in its container: it takes the form that is allowed to it.
The configuration of the landscape, the presence of natural elements such as watercourses, forests or wetlands, and the structure of the surrounding rural areas therefore influence the choice of agroecological practices. For example, the presence of ecological corridors or the conservation of wetlands can favor biodiversity and promote the presence of insects useful for the biological control of infestations.
As can be seen, there is a very close link between agroecology and landscape, and one feeds on the other and vice versa.
The advent of agroecology will influence the appearance and structure of the agricultural landscape through the promotion of biodiversity, the sustainable use of natural resources and the participation of local communities. At the same time, a well-balanced and ecologically sound landscape tends to influence the practice of agroecology, providing opportunities for the conservation of biodiversity and the adoption of specific agroecological practices.
However, to create agricultural landscapes composed of fields and farms, following agroecological management, an understanding of biodiversity models, biological interactions and mechanisms that determine and stimulate the functioning of ecosystems is required to improve services on a landscape scale, involving farmers in a bottom-up and context-specific approach (Jeanneret P. et al. 2021).
There is no doubt that, in the coming years, the issues that will involve land planning will increasingly have to see the participation of ecologists, agronomists and other professionals with integrated skills in order to restore to landscapes that ecological, ethical and aesthetic functionality useful to a long-lasting balance.

Guido Bissanti