Final Activity Report Summary - FARMING ECONOMICALLY (Farming Economically, a new path to sustainable rural development in Galicia, Spain) The overall objective of this research project was to develop a new approach to sustainable rural development, in which sustainability was not only economically defined but social and ecological aspects were also taken into account. In order to do so, this approach combined a multifunctional concept of agriculture with a multidimensional concept of sustainability. Both were integrated into a multilevel analysis that took into account not only the level of individual farms but also the level of the regions, which together built one agro-ecosystem. The multifunctional character of farming was carried out by reviewing the transformation at regional level of the farming sector, which if fact revealed a sort of homogenisation, specialisation and intensification in terms of the orientation of the activity and output. However, at a micro-level analysis, when considering a representative sample of dairy farms, heterogeneity in the management arose. Furthermore, the different socio-economic and ecological impact of different styles of farming, among which economically farming was present, was assessed by considering different sorts of indicators. This helped to approach the different degree of socioeconomic and ecological sustainability as well as the real and potential impact of the different ways of doing both within the contexts of the cooperative and the region. The most important scientific achievement was that farming economically came as an interesting point of departure for the construction of sustainability in a multidimensional level. Furthermore, this style revealed a way of implementing a practice that was closest to the traditional peasant one, where locally available knowledge and resources were used more intensively than external ones. It, hence, mattered how farming was carried out. Strategies based on local ecosystems and resources were a response to the homogenising way that modernisation imposed during the last forty years, as well as a step forward towards a more sustainable agriculture and more balanced and fair rural development.
