Nieves Pérez: «It is important for people to see that academia is still committed to rural areas»
The deterioration and abandonment of rural areas is a scourge that Galicia has suffered for some time. Its consequences are devastating economically, politically, socially, and environmentally. Land erosion, increased vulnerability to fires and biodiversity loss are just a small example.
That is why figures such as the New Entrants, people who join the agricultural field without being linked to it, are essential to fight against the demographic drain that our territory is suffering. But their role involves overcoming a series of challenges that can only be overcome thanks to the work of people like Nieves Pérez Rodríguez.
Senior research technician at Campus Terra and member of the Territory Laboratory (LaboraTe), Nieves Perez has spent years nurturing her curriculum through participation in many national and interregional projects, municipal management plans and platforms, all within the broad field of territorial management.
Today we call on his expert voice to talk to us about, among other things, the mechanisms being implemented to facilitate access to land, the importance of fostering innovation in the countryside and the connection between the university and the countryside.
-Sustainability is one of the most pressing challenges facing society. What role does territorial management play in overcoming this challenge?
-Land management is fundamental. Planning and managing land use, or our natural resources, will contribute positively or negatively to issues as important as food security, environmental protection, heritage conservation or people's quality of life. It is important to approach it from a multi-scale and multidisciplinary perspective (environmental, economic, sociocultural dimension) and rely on participatory processes to involve the population as an active part of this management from the planning phase.
-Among other things, you participate as a researcher in the TERRACTIVA Operational Group, which has just published a guide to facilitate new entrants' access to land. How important are these profiles in the future of the Galician and European agrarian model? What tools do they have to acquire and exploit the land?
-Yes, it was a very enriching project. It seeks to develop approaches, tools and resources, to inspire and improve the capacities of the entities and professionals that support new entrants in their installation in agriculture. In it, we published several documents, including the guide "Landing in the agricultural sector: how to support new entrants in access to land" (which will soon be available on the TERRACTIVA website), aimed at entities and professionals who, to a greater or lesser extent, are accompanying and advising these people at the beginning of their activity, and also those others who want to start providing this type of support.
The purpose of this document is to:
- Inspire a global reflection on a new entrant's search, selection, negotiation and formalization of access to land.
- Systematize the type and approach of the entity's support for these new entrants to the agricultural activity.
- To provide a model from which the support entity can elaborate a practical manual to direct its action of accompaniment to the NE (New Entrant) person, adjusting it to its situation, territorial context, resources and capacities.
As it happens in other sectors, the new entrants in agriculture, which we define in the guide as those who start for the first time an agricultural and livestock activity and who have no previous link with the farming sector, come to counteract, both in Galicia and in Europe, the demographic fading of the sector, since the family succession does not seem to ensure the needs of generational relief that we have in agriculture.
As we pointed out in the guide, this type of new incorporation faces its difficulties, in addition to those already faced by the production sector. On many occasions, these people do not have experience or agricultural knowledge, have no direct connections with the sector, nor even with the rural sector, and often lack sufficient capital or assets to start a new economic activity.
In addition, one of the greatest challenges for the NE collective is access to land, sufficient in quantity and quality. This challenge must be addressed in phases; the first is essential and defines the needs of land for the activity to be developed in terms of quantity, quality, location, water access needs, etc. Something that seems obvious and needs to be done is conditioning the viability of the initiative they want to develop.
We also compiled inspiring experiences and an anthology of different initiatives in different countries that seek to support new entrants in their search for and access to land for their project. We are finalizing a support window, Cultiva nas Mariñas, precisely with their needs in mind for the Marinas region.
Regarding the importance of these profiles, both at the European and Galician levels, the statistics indicate that the agricultural sector (as in others) is aging, and there is, in many cases, a lack of relief in the family environment for many different reasons. To provide some data, according to the last agricultural census (2020), in Galicia, just over 48% of farm managers were over 64 years old, and 23% were between 55 and 64.
-You are also part of the LaboraTe (Territory Laboratory) research group. What are your current lines of research?
-I am fortunate to have been part of LaboraTe since 2009, and to work with leading researchers in areas such as land management, land use changes or land management: I have learned a lot from them and with them.
In this sense, my main fields of work are related to the development and innovation in geospatial technologies and land management:
- Analyze and diagnose territorial dynamics and instruments in land use, land ownership and mobility, natural resources management and rural development.
- Construction, processing and debugging of geospatial databases,
- Application of geospatial analysis techniques.
- Development of innovation projects in the field of territorial planning and the elaboration of scientific-technical reports.
-In a few days the deadline to compete for the Rafael Creciente Awards for innovative initiatives in territorial management, organized by the USC through the Institute of Biodiversity and Rural Development (IBADER) and LaboraTe, will end. What role do these types of contests play in the promotion and encouragement of innovation in the field of territorial management?
-They give visibility to disciplines people find more difficult to relate to research and innovation. These awards include many of the works that are developed in Campus Terra, not only by researchers but also by students who express their ideas, in many cases innovative ones, in a TFM or TFG, giving them value and visibility so that people see that academia is still committed to rural areas. It is a way of broadly valuing research in territorial management from the academic sphere. It is oriented toward practice, as Rafa has always tried to do throughout his career at USC.
-You have experience in elaborating on general municipal management plans. What are your functions as an agricultural engineer in urban planning?
-The legislation indicates that a multidisciplinary team must carry out a General Plan; therefore, considering that we are also regulating the determinations of rural land, agronomists have a place.
But, specifically in the research group, what was sought was the application of technological, methodological and conceptual innovations developed through research projects; thus, for example, a core delimitation was done in a "classic" way and another using an algorithm designed to automatically perform the delimitation, allowing the results to be compared.
Therefore, the functions of the agronomists or foresters who worked on planning in the group were not only those of drafting the plan but were always seeking to achieve this research component, testing the tools that were designed by another part of the researchers, more focused on the development of these tools.
-Platforms such as ATERRIZA are exceptional tools for promoting new agro-livestock projects, efficiently redistributing land ownership and promoting sustainable land use. What is the basis for the functioning of this initiative that you helped set up?
-As with most, these platforms will only work if they have people to promote and use them. However, focusing on the tool's operation, the group made an effort to design a viewer where it is not necessary to have programming knowledge to create a form, upload a layer from a SIX or connect a WMS. It is being used in ATERRIZA and other projects, with the advantage that the technician working with the viewer can adapt it to their needs directly, generating the forms themselves or uploading the layers, changing the legends, only with an administrator account.
-The proliferation of forest fires and land management are two elements that are closely linked. What are the current trends in the fight against fire from the land management perspective? How can we act as a society to tackle this problem?
-From a land management perspective, the aim is to reduce the intensity and incidence of fires and try to increase the resilience of villages. Simply put, this is no more (and no less) than actively managing their environment and having a good plan of use, similar to what our grandparents did when they were young.
It seems simple, but the changes in land use in recent decades, abandonment, the lack of incorporation into the agricultural sector, or the fragmentation of the property, often make this happen.
According to the latest cadastral statistics (2023), Galicia has a rustic area of just over 2.82 million hectares, distributed in about 10.9 million plots and just over 1.7 million holders, of which more than 66% are individuals. If each holder manages or assigns (in whatever way he considers) his land to manage, imagine the number of viable projects that could coexist.
A recent study (Corbelle-Rico et al., 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105808 ) estimated that putting into production land with good agricultural aptitude (about 500,000ha) could make an annual contribution to the Galician GDP of just over 400 million euros.
-And finally, a few years ago you worked as a mediator and salesperson in several grape harvesting campaigns. What can you tell us about these experiences?
-Yes, many years ago, they were one of those first jobs you find when you leave college, and I have fond memories of those days looking to see if what was coming into the wineries was Mencia or Mouratón, which they wanted to see if it was Mencia.