THE ROLE OF DIVERSITY AND DIVERSIFICATION FOR RESILIENT AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Biodiversity is a unique and precious heritage: generic but also cultural, social and economic. Its drastic curtailment, however, puts at risk the survival of local farming systems, and this is even more so in fragile socio-economic contexts where it risks translating into conditions of food insecurity and poverty. From the elementary level of the gene, rising in complexity up to the ecosystem, it is therefore a central element in defining first the resistance and then the resilience of the system, and by the first term meaning the degree of resistance to a disruption that distances it from the initial state of equilibrium and by the second the capacity of a system to return to guaranteeing minimum standards following a disturbance, the capacity to get back on ones feet after a fall. It seems to be crucial, then, at a time when cooperation development projects that operate in various ways to safeguard and promote biodiversity are far more numerous, to intervene to preserve and restore the local biodiversity in order to avert future problems, and even curb them ahead of time, using resilience as an approach for managing the system we are dealing with (natural or heavily affected by human activity). In any event, this is a passage that is not routine, which makes it necessary to look at the ecosystem, at its various components, both natural and human. In the light of these preliminary remarks, the article will analyse the potentiality for applying, also in the field of development cooperation, the theoretical approach including empirical methods and instruments represented by the Diversified Farming Systems DFS), where the starting point is diversity and diversification as functional elements in the construction of resilient farming systems.