Multifunctionality

In addition to its primary function of producing food and fibre, agriculture can also design the landscape, protect the environment and territory and conserve biodiversity, manage resources sustainably, contribute to the socio-economic survival of rural areas, guarantee food security. When agriculture adds one or more of these functions to its primary role it can be defined multifunctional.” (OECD – Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation – 2001). According to the definition of the Directorate General for Agriculture of the European Commission, the multifunctionality brings together the “complementary roles that agriculture plays within society, in addition to its role as a food producer”, including “the provision of public goods, such as security food, sustainable development, environmental protection, rural vitality and maintenance of a general balance within society between farmers’ incomes and people’s incomes other occupations”. The multifunctionality of agriculture can be defined as the “capacity of the primary sector to produce secondary goods and services of various kinds jointly and to a certain extent inevitably connected to the production of products intended for human and animal consumption”