Farmers and sustainability

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of farmers in maintaining sustainability in a contemporary context of environmental crisis, which has been defined by some authors as a civilizational crisis due to its transversality and historical significance of planetary and local dimensions. The causes of the crisis are mentioned, including appropriation models and energy and mobility systems based on and sustained by fossil fuels, which produce atmospheric carbonization with the consequent greenhouse effect responsible for a substantial part of the planet’s global warming. In this context, the primary sector’s strategic role in sustainable development cannot be forgotten, and it may be noted that one of the difficulties in the achievement of sustainable development is the so-called conceptual babelism. One of the many ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to develop new strategies of urban functionalism for transport, general mobility and consumption of nearby food resources, in order to reduce the city’s ecological footprint and to respect the energy balance principle. Farmers and the productive and distribution model are vital to overcoming the environmental crisis, beyond their important contribution to food sustainability and to the modeling, construction and operation of the socio-environmental landscape. The role of primary activity and its associated constructions (such as dry stone walls and farm buildings) in the maintenance of wild biodiversity, crops and pastures is highlighted. For its transposable value, the Montseny massif is described as an example of all this, with a new categorization of its farmhouses. This allows an understanding of the global change phenomenon and of the dynamics of change in postmodern society.