MULTIFUNCTIONAL AGRICULTURE AND INTEGRATION OF FARMING PRODUCTION SYSTEMS WITHIN AGRIBUSINESS CHAINS

Nowadays is recognized that the agriculture goes beyond that only the food production, so the concept of agricultural multifunctionality is introduced in order to describe this fact, recovering the true sense of the agriculture, and classifying its functions in three groups: 1) food security, 2) environment, and 3) socio cultural. In each one of these functions, the agricultural production systems generate two categories of products: a) the traditional outputs (commodities), such as food, fibers and energy, and b) the non traditional outputs (non-commodities), which included aspects related with the environment and territory, employment, human resources and work, food safety and quality, animal welfare, food security and economic autonomy of the rural regions among others. Finally, we explore the evolution that agricultural production systems have had from a productivist focus toward a model where the new paradigm is the multifunctional agriculture, where the developing countries could have an important place.