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FARM TOURISM AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT. A SUCCESSFUL COMBINATION? A LOCAL EXPERIENCE
2006-07-19T14:25:17Z
Editor(s)
Claval, Paul
Pagnini, Maria Paola
Scaini, Maurizio
Abstract
Most people consider the territory as a substratum almost inert and inorganic, as a simple
stage for communities and human activities. Actually a territory as a region, is a whole and an
organic structure with human and physical elements; one acts on the other (Bissanti, 1978).
The knowledge of availability of landscape resources (landscape as a combination between
human and physical tracts that bestows to a territory typical features), affects, for example, the
economic and social development of a community but the use of resources depends on that
development. The different distribution of men and their activities on space have a precise
functionality and a particular aim: to emphasise resources and territories.
Tourism is one of those activities that use and waste the territory; it, always, needs new
and incontaminated spaces. At the same time it reproduces processes of urbanisation and thus
typical features of places become less evident.
An often notable change derives from territorial potentialities, whose consequence is that
"space is not only visited; but it is also organized (remodelled, restructured) and also
consumed" (Lozato-Giotart, 1999, p.20).
There are three big areas in which changes take place:
- life style and welfare of host community (probably a loss of cultural heritage occurs);
- functional, productive and assimilative power of ecological system;
- nature, with a change of the ecosystem.
Careful tourism planning imbued with the principles of sustainable development, should
prevent or restrict the pollution of sites made fragile by an excessive tourist crowd. The
sustainable development of tourism, instead, means to preserve the “diversity” in local culture
and places.
Moreover, change in use of soil, different migratory dynamics and economic, social,
environmental impact caused by new tourism forms and outdoor recreation, have increased
general interest towards rural tourism. Among the different kinds of rural tourism there is farm
tourism whose importance is increasing in Italy. In 2001 farms involved in tourism have
increased of 2% with regards to the previous year; number of rooms of 12%; arrivals have
been almost three million, more than 18% of the previous year.
Two territorial quality components are very important: the first one is the infrastructural
and material component (environmental elements, natural resources, public and private
structures, infrastructures); the second is the immaterial component, or capacity of men to
emphasize present resources.
The Italian experience demonstrates the importance of territorial quality for rural tourism
success. To reach a greater performance of farm tourism (and generally of rural tourism), a
strategy is necessary, based on valorisation of regional heritage as environmental, cultural,
artistic, historical wealth and agricultural traditional products.
In other words is necessary to emphasize the relationship between agriculture and tourism,
considering it as a strategic factor in economic development of an area.
The aim of this paper will be to analyse positive and negative effects of farm tourism
activity on a part of Apulia and in particular in the Province of Bari.
Research has these ends:
- to verify if rural communities have been involved in tourism development process; - to verify if those communities have kept their traditions and values so as to be known by
tourists. So it's be important to verify maintenance, for example, of: traditional architectural
style, local language use, gastronomy, hand-manufactured goods, and to verify the
maintenance of cultural identity and the inclusion or exclusion of rural communities in the
economic development process or the diffusion of standardized life styles.
Journal
Proceedings of the Conference THE CULTURAL TURN IN GEOGRAPHY, 18-20th of September 2003 - Gorizia Campus
Part VI: Tourism, Sustainable Development and Culture Turn
Languages
en
Rights
© Copyright 2003 Edizioni Università di Trieste - EUT
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