What is it about?
This paper explores the process and the possibilities of engaging with actors in eco-social transformation to collaboratively represent sustainable agriculture with the people. It focuses on the transition of a family farm in western Almería, southern Spain, from intensive agriculture to agroecology, a type of agriculture that not only uses the land but also seeks to preserve it and its natural ecosystem. It also analyzes our collaborative engagement to create a documentary documenting their view of sustainable agriculture. Following the family’s personal and emotional changes, the paper deconstruct the documentary to explore the political and economic changes the family underwent to attain their current vision of emotional agriculture, as well as the way they opened up to protect biological diversity and the diversity of worldviews mediating the future of sustainable agriculture.
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Photo by Esteban Benites on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We are in a scenario were the price crises keeps accentuating in the intensive agricultural industry, as well as its modes of resource extraction. This work is of extreme importance because it shows real life examples of alternative business and financing models as well as other modes of fresh produce production that preserve diversity, promote ecological production and remain local. As social scientists we need to be critical of the different narratives of sustainability that circulate in and outside global production networks, showing the need to preserve diversity as the core piece of global sustainability debates.
Perspectives
I hope this article makes what people might think is a slightly abstract concepts like agroecology and meaningful sustainability, kind of interesting and maybe even exciting. Because the way we spend we choose to produce and consume our food from now on, as well as the ways in which we chose to make sustainability transition visible to the wider public is not just a problem for agro-giants, politicians, managers and researchers to worry about - it is an issue that touches every single human being on this planet in one way or another. More than anything else, I hope you find this article and the story of Antonia and Matías thought-provoking.
Paloma Yáñez Serrano
Uniwersytet im Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: It Is What It Is: Visualizing sustainability collaboratively in western Almería, Journal of Environmental Media, October 2022, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/jem_00072_1.
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