Hidden costs of La Mancha's production model and drivers of change

TL;DR

This paper examines the hidden ecological, social, and cultural costs of La Mancha's current production model, highlighting environmental degradation and loss of territorial identity, and explores drivers for a more sustainable future.

Contribution

It reveals the true costs of environmental degradation in La Mancha and identifies drivers of change towards sustainability in rural production systems.

Findings

Environmental deterioration linked to industrial agriculture

Loss of territorial identity and traditional heritage

Identification of drivers promoting sustainable change

Abstract

The territory of La Mancha, its rural areas, and its landscapes suffer a kind of atherosclerosis ("the silent killer") because of the increase in artificial surfaces, the fragmentation of the countryside by various infrastructures, the abandonment of small and medium-sized farms and the loss of agricultural, material, and intangible heritage. At the same time, agricultural industrialization hides, behind a supposed productive efficiency, the deterioration of the quantitative and qualitative ecological status of surface and groundwater bodies, and causes air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, loss of soil fertility, drainage and plowing of wetlands, forgetfulness of the ancestral environmental heritage, of the emergence of uses and customs of collective self-government and reduction of the adaptive capacity of traditional agroecosystems. This work aims, firstly, to shed light on the true costs of the main causes of environmental degradation in the territory of La Mancha, while deteriorating relations between rural and urban areas and determining the loss of territorial identity of La Mancha. the population. In addition, drivers of change toward a more sustainable social, economic, hydrological, environmental, and cultural production model are identified.