Agricultura, desarrollo económico y democracia

There have been frequent proposals of ways of economic development based on the de-ruralization of economic activity. Behind them lie the empowerment of other productive sectors and other locations for economic activity. The underlying hypothesis is that the potentialities that induce development are to be found in other productive activities and in large urban spaces. The objective of this essay is to highlight the opportunities wasted through de-ruralizing policies when the societies whose prosperity is meant to be boosted are poor and ruralized, that is, they are economies in which most of the population live in small nuclei whose main activity, around which other activities revolve, is agrarian. The intention is to show that, in these cases, de-ruralization might not be the best strategy if what is sought is socially and environmentally balanced growth. To support this line of argument, the productive potential of agrarian activities and of rural economies, as well as the capacity of rural societies to construct cooperative and permeable institutional contexts, will be shown.