| Abstract |
Multifunctional is all that can perform more functions. Agriculture has had for a long time only one function: the production of raw materials for food and subsequently for the textile industry (vegetable and animal fibers); this function was reflected in economic statistics, given that added value and employment largely depended on the primary sector. Today, in the advanced countries it is no longer the case, we are trying to rediscover in agriculture those functions hidden by looming production needs and to invent, why not, new functions, shaped to market needs and translated into high added value services. Consider, for example, the educational(1), therapeutic(2), identifying(3), cultural(4), ecological - environmental(5) function, and last but not least, the recreational and tourist function that responds to the need of people to escape from often overcrowded and polluted urban environments. The old farmhouses and modern farmhouses, for example, are favorite destinations for lovers of rural life in contact with nature. Rural tourism, today, can only be an integrated and coordinated component within integrated rural development models specific to each territory, able to ensure a balance between consumption and reproduction of rural collective resources through active participation, of all territorial stakeholders, in strategic choices in a new approach to the circular economy. |