The peri-urban as a local food system in the south of Santa Fe (Argentina)

Abstract

The growth of many Argentine cities is verified territorially in a space called "peri-urban" by several authors. The ones devoted to its study agree in defining it as a marginal strip of urban-rural transition which is partially assimilated by the process of urban dispersion and preserves typically rural attributes. This space emerges as a result of a haphazard process of urban growth, which makes irregular advances among different points of the city, thus generating a heterogeneous pattern of land use that, in general, characterizes this strip of land. The peri-urban is characterized by situations of speculation, diversity in the use of the land and the development of the dispersed habitat, frequently lacking the necessary services and equipment. In these transitional spaces, relevant socio-environmental tensions and problems arise from the expansion and growth of the cities and the main methods of agricultural production. It shows a high dynamic and its fast transformations account for the limitations of its study as if it merely were a dichotomy between rural and urban. This article intends to compare socio-productive proposals within the framework of local development for the management of the peri-urban in localities in the south of Santa Fe Argentina in the period 2010-2020, which include changes in production practices. The methods used are a comparative table in the economic, social and environmental dimensions and the MESMIS framework, which allows to identify the characteristics of the management systems in a transition process towards the production of agroecological food, which will contribute to achieve a growth in harmony with the environment, to reduce social inequalities and to develop the economies of cities and towns in the South of Santa Fe.