Agroecological development as a process of resistance to the pressure of the real estate and industrial agro-productive market

According to the 2010 National Census (INDEC), 71% of the residents were born in the city of Rosario, 16% come from other provinces of the country and 9% from other localities of the province. According to a study carried out by the Provincial Institute of Statistics of the province of Santa Fe on data from the 2010 National Census, it was revealed that for the first time in the history of the Censuses, immigrants from Paraguay surpassed Italians, who until then had been the largest minority throughout all known census records. Other 59 migrant groups of medium importance came from Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay, among others.

In fact, the majority of Rosarinos are descendants of European peoples, mainly Italians - the majority nationality in Rosario - and Spaniards. However, although with lesser presence, also arrived to the city and its region: British, Irish, French, Germans, Swiss, Greeks, Ukrainians, Croatians, Turks, Arabs (mainly Syrians and Lebanese). Other migratory currents quantitatively less representative were made up of Poles and Russians -many of the latter belonging to the Jewish people-. 

Since the crisis of 1930, Rosario has received an important flow of internal migration, which has been accentuated since the mid-1940s. During the last decades these migrations come mainly from the interior of Santa Fe, and from the province of Chaco (northeast of the country) and from the aboriginal ethnic group Toba/Gom, who, living in extreme poverty in their place of origin, look for a better destiny in the big city.

European immigrants, mainly Italians, brought with them knowledge and customs associated with food cultivation, which were progressively integrated into the local culture. This knowledge, practices and customs were relevant for the subsistence of the newcomers, whether for rural work or for the domestic production of species for self-consumption.  The same happened with the settlers from northern Argentina, who arrived in the cities in search of better living conditions and, later, with immigrants from neighboring countries. This knowledge and practices, together with the availability of fertile soil, gave rise to local processes at different scales, from the formation of peri-urban farms, components of the Rosario green belt, to home gardens.  This series of events constitutes the fertile substratum on which the agroecological development of the city is based.

Greater Rosario is one of the world's largest soybean and by-product export hubs, with more than 80% of the country's cereal and by-product exports being shipped from its ports. This makes it one of the main grain and financial markets in Argentina and one of the most important agricultural regions in the world. Under this logic, wealth is concentrated in small sectors and there is a growing number of people living in poverty (38.3% INDEC, 2020) and a high percentage of indigent people (7.4% INDEC, 2022).  

Serious political and economic crises at the national level during the last thirty-five years (1989, 2001, 2008) have had a significant impact, not only on the social but also on the urban structure of Rosario. Poverty and indigence increased after each crisis, configuring a fluctuating dynamic that is maintained.  This dynamic was aggravated by the climate emergency and the crisis caused by COVID19. In a context of health vulnerability, progressively unfavorable weather conditions and energy deficit, informal work and "self-employment" are on the rise. Wages are falling while food prices are rising. The increase in taxes, in addition to the high inflationary indexes, destabilizes and/or breaks the middle classes, while many poor sectors increase their indigence.

These recurrent crises, affect the population as a whole but especially the most vulnerable. In Rosario more than one hundred thousand people live in irregular settlements (112 settlements registered during the National Survey of Popular Neighborhoods carried out in 2019). In these settlements, more than 90% of the dwellings do not have basic water, sewage, gas, or storm drains. They only have informal power lines, with the consequent risks. During economic crises, the vulnerable population is the most affected. State assistance to these groups is generally based on the provision of food, medicines and other basic products. During the 2001 crisis, which hit the city of Rosario in particular, the Urban Agriculture Program was implemented, which massively promoted the installation of group orchards and numerous family vegetable gardens were developed to gain access to food. The municipality provided accompaniment, seeds, tools and economic support to those who participated in the projects. The traditional knowledge of people from the north of the country, accustomed to growing food and medicinal plants, was of great value in these initiatives. Some of the people who worked in these gardens sustained the activity by becoming "Urban Gardeners" through production in Group Gardens and Garden Parks, and commercialization in Agroecological Fairs.

Regarding vegetable production in the peri-urban as a source of income, which occupied a relatively significant place in the region decades ago (9,495 hectares according to the INTA 1985 horticultural census in the Gran Rosario region), and whose dynamics consisted of the transfer of land and work generation after generation, it should be noted that it has declined significantly (2,929 hectares according to the INTA 2021 Census). One of the reasons is that their sons and daughters do not work with their parents as they did traditionally. The horticultural activity is currently carried out by 30% of families descendants of producers from Italian immigration at the beginning of the 20th century, local producers and mostly by families of small family producers from the neighbouring country of Bolivia, who arrived mainly in the recent 20 years. The latter have serious difficulties in accessing and securing land tenure. Faced with the urgent need to produce healthy food nearby, these processes that are taking place constitute conflicts to be faced and resolved as soon as possible.

The cultivation of vegetables for self-consumption and as an alternative for the achievement of a genuine income, has been a strategy to alleviate unemployment, poverty and hunger during and after the recent socioeconomic crises in the city of Rosario. Within the framework of municipal public policies, the support to initiatives of Non-Governmental Organizations related to the development of Agroecology during the 1990s, the creation of the Urban Agriculture Program in 2002 and, since that moment in a sustained manner through multiple and diverse integrated actions -among which the creation of the Peri-urban Green Belt Project in 2016, requalified as a Program in 2020 (Ordinance 10141/20) should be mentioned- has had the purpose of sustaining and structurally consolidating of intensive and extensive food activity and Agroecology in Rosario.

The urban and urbanistic processes that have taken place in Rosario have been shaping a central area of compact and dense structure that extends over the perimeter rings, and a periphery in which urbanization advances in a diffuse and discontinuous way. These characteristics, which are common denominators in Latin American cities where real estate markets press in a speculative manner and without regulations, imply a duality of urban configurations that trigger conflicts related to unlimited densities and inefficient dispersion. 

After the creation of Rosario's Urban Agriculture Program in 2002, in the midst of a socioeconomic crisis and with poverty rates of over 50%, a process of analysis, proposals and actions was initiated to optimize the use of vacant land for local food production. The availability of vacant public land with no budget for its intervention and of land that could not be developed but was suitable for agroecological production, made possible the progressive configuration of urban agroecological production spaces. 

The scarcity and consequent rise in the prices of intra-urban land with infrastructure and services, drives real estate speculation on peri-urban and rural sectors, with low initial cost and high subsequent costs due to the need to build infrastructure and equipment, to which must be added the social and economic costs implicit in the distances to be traveled and the lack of sufficient services and activities. This dynamic includes as a target the land of the traditional "quintas" that made up the Green Belt of Greater Rosario.  As a consequence, peri-urban horticultural gardens have been disappearing during the last 50 years, due to the advance of urban and rural borders, causing a greater dependence on the arrival of food from distant places.

The reduction of productive spaces for food production in the city and in the rest of the metropolitan horticultural belt, implied the loss of food autonomy of Rosario and other conurbations, depending largely on the supply of production from other regions of the country. This situation is aggravated by the energy crisis and the climate emergency.

The productive surface that Rosario currently has in the peri-urban area, according to the last survey of November 2021 (carried out by the CVR Project of the Municipality of Rosario), CITA is approximately 1453.3 Ha in the Undeveloped Area (1,146.5 ha with extensive crops and 276 Ha of horticultural crops). 57 productive Units have been identified, of which 10 are dedicated to conventional extensive production, 31 to conventional intensive production, 2 mixed horticultural and conventional extensive units, 9 agroecological intensive units, 1 apicultural unit, 1 floricultural unit, 1 conventional and extensive fruit and vegetable unit, 1 agroecological and conventional intensive unit and 1 agroecological intensive and conventional extensive unit. From 2016 to the present (2022), the peri-urban horticultural area in Rosario has remained at the same level as in 2016.

Faced with these realities, in the framework of the Municipality's public policies and in view of the growing number of people affected by the use of agrochemicals, Ordinance No. 8871/11 was passed, which prohibits the application of agrochemicals, setting agronomic boundaries in Rosario that, despite its small area, try to protect the most exposed population from spraying (100 m from urbanization line and 50 m around houses and schools, 50 m from watercourses and agroecological crops).

Another relevant measure, during 2013, consisted of protecting, through Municipal Ordinance (Ord 9144/2013), 800 hectares regulated for fruit and vegetable production, promoting agroecological production. Three years later, with the creation of the Rosario Green Belt Project, under the auspices of the Secretaries of Economic Development and Employment, Environment and Public Space and Health of the Municipality of Rosario, active work began to control and promote good agricultural practices and promote the transition to agroecological methods through training and technical advice. It is worth mentioning that Bolivian producers working in establishments in the periurban area of Rosario have adopted these methods, contributing to the process of resistance aimed at protecting the soil and access to healthy food nearby.

It is important to mention that during 2020 a strong real estate pressure was exerted to modify the land use of a large part of the 800 hectares regulated for fruit and vegetable production. This process resulted in a productive land proposal that reclassified the fruit and vegetable land as industrial, presented to the Rosario City Council at the end of the year. The proposal for a change of use was striking, considering that 70% of the industrial land in Rosario was vacant at the time of the presentation, according to the last survey conducted by the Metropolitan Coordination Entity (ECOM) in 2021. “The cause of such vacancy is the lack of infrastructure and services in the areas qualified for industrial uses" (Barenboim, 2022). It should be clarified that fruit and vegetable protection areas similarly lack infrastructure and services necessary for industry.

After strong resistance from NGOs, quinteros/as and part of the Rosario City Council, most of this land was preserved and the Integral Plan for Productive Land and Productive Investments (Ord. 10139/2020) was approved, which incorporates figures of interest, such as the Periurban Agricultural Park (Ord 10142/2020) and creates the Sustainable Food Production Program (Ord 10141/2020).

Changes in rural land production modalities (industrialized agriculture and transgenic crops), and diffuse urban expansion, have been destroying the territorial green infrastructure of the city and its region, of which the horticultural gardens and farms were an important component. In the context of climate change, these processes produce serious conflicts related especially to high temperatures, alterations in the rainfall regime and the serious productive and sanitary consequences implied.

Likewise, the agro-technological "package" destroys natural soil conditions, affects air, water, flora and fauna, and discontinues ecosystemic functions that make viable the environmental services that are indispensable for sustaining natural, modified and anthropic systems.

Faced with the serious and growing conflicts to be solved within the framework of urban management (floods, high temperatures, energy deficit, difficulties in transporting food produced at a distance, health risks due to fumigations and ingestion of contaminants, increasing volumes of waste that are difficult to transport and store, etc.), local decision-makers and technicians in charge of managing the relevant areas began to value the multiple advantages of agroecological practices and food production in the vicinity as contributions to the solution of these problems.

In fact, the information built from the analysis of the effects of agroecological production in the vicinity to reduce food miles and GHG emissions in Rosario, and of the positive impact of agroecological practices on the performance of spaces with vegetation cover to reduce the risk of flooding and the urban heat island, made it possible to quantify the indispensable environmental services provided by agroecology to the city and its population.

 It is worth mentioning that the technical teams of the UA and the PCVR, together with horticultural gardeners and peri-urban producers, have developed a great deal of experience in composting techniques for the improvement of productive soil. These practices demand nutrients that constitute urban organic waste, so their use implies optimizing a problematic flow within the city by channeling virtuous metabolisms through composting. Agroecological soil is a "living" soil in which ecosystemic functions take place that make viable the provision of environmental services of supply, regulation and support. These aspects have been evaluated and quantified, showing significant improvements with respect to soil under conventional cultivation methods.

"To the contributions that Urban and Periurban Agriculture (UPA) contributes to a more sustainable development (in its three dimensions, economic, environmental and social), it is important the role it plays in relation to food security, employment generation, generation of ecosystem services; aspects that show us the multifunctionality of this type of agriculture" (Van Veenhuizen, 2006; Aubry et al, 2012). 

The integrated management of the PAU and the PCVR with other municipal units that operate in territorial planning has been based on the diversity of advantages mentioned that can be obtained from agroecological development. An articulating line of action is defined in terms of the need to progressively create a system of food production and value addition, integrated to the green infrastructure, to the productive occupation ecologically compatible with certain sensitive areas to be protected, and to the protection of irreplaceable environmental services. This vision has determined the incorporation of Agroecology as a productive-spatial strategy in Rosario's urban and peri-urban territorial planning instruments.

Since 2003 and without interruption until the present (2022), from the PUA first and from 2016 jointly with the PCVR, action-research, inter-institutional, interdisciplinary and participatory projects were developed, subsidized by State and International Funding Agencies. The teams in charge have always been made up of diverse actors, among which agroecological producers play an important role. The topics addressed have responded to the different needs of each stage of the agroecology development process in the city.

The processes and results of these projects have contributed in a concrete and significant way to advance and consolidate the Agroecological development of Rosario.

Among the topics developed, the analysis of urban and peri-urban unbuilt land and the classification and determination of suitability and accessibility for agroecological production were key to plan the land actually available. It was also essential to design the regulatory framework and devices to legalize access and secure land tenure for the new urban farmers, who were beginning to identify themselves and be socially recognized for this role. The participatory design of productive spaces involved the proposal and construction of new spatial typologies and the optimization of ongoing establishments. The construction of indicators to quantify the contributions and advantages of agroecology to mitigate the causes and adapt to the consequences of climate change was of great value to support the need to consolidate existing productive spaces, preserve fruit and vegetable land against the onslaught of real estate speculation, and promote the activity. Projects were also developed, among others, aimed at the participatory design of equipment for productive spaces. 

The components of composting and the quality of the products obtained are currently being analyzed, as well as the attributes of agroecological soil in comparison with other soils. 

Despite the difficulties and obstacles that need to be resolved, many of the dynamics that have been taking place in the city are promising for the agroecological future of the city of Rosario.