*3.1. Agri-Food Systems*

Agriculture has been crucial for the development of humankind. Since the Neolithic period, when Homo sapiens learned to domesticate species of plants and animals, they began to transform themselves into cultivator societies. This transformation of the environment from the original represents the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Such change

leads authors such as Childe [36] to affirm that this was the first revolution to transform the human economy.

The possibility of settling down in a particular place and producing one's own food was, in fact, revolutionary, changing the dynamics of the whole world. No species had done it before, and it allowed small communities to be born and become societies. The spread of this model of life happened differently across the world. The cultivated species and animals were different and adapted differently in each place. This difference implies two main subsystems of agriculture: a cultivated ecosystem, and a productive social system [1,37–40].

These two subsystems define the characteristics of food, as well as its social dynamics and economic environment. It is crucial to understand the concept of what food represents in all of its meanings. Food is not just what one eats; it is a product of thousands of years of interactions between humans and the environment. Furthermore, it has consequences for the formation of societies, economic dynamics, and culture. The following section of this work details both subsystems.

According to the authors of [1], the cultivated ecosystem deals with a set of practices and land use—direct and indirect—that affect soil fertility, its physical aspects, diversity, and any type of practice that changes its conditions of use and/or its surroundings. Factors such as the intensity of use and the techniques employed have a variable influence on both plant and animal production. This comprehension is set by the sum and interrelation between subsystems that do not exist independently.

On the other hand, the productive social system, according to the authors of [1], represents three main aspects of production: men and women, including labor force, knowledge, and savoir-faire; inert means, such as equipment and tools; and living matter, such as plant and animal species. The geographically localized combination of these factors, along with the type of usage, technical, economic, and social definitions, allows a theoretical construction of agrarian systems' dynamics, as Thom [41] pointed out to the value of systems' taxonomy.

Therefore, the development of a theory of agrarian systems is crucial for analysis. Despite the conceptual differences, these two are the core of these complex, structured, well-established subsystems that sustain a theoretical structure. Agrarian systems develop as a result of general changes in the form of production, the employed labor, the adopted techniques, the productive capacity, or the purpose. They can develop in an unequal, contradictory manner, or even go into crisis. According to Mazoyer and Roudart [1], when the changes in those factors engender a new cultivated ecosystem, an agricultural revolution takes place.

The theory of agrarian systems differs on some level from spatial production theory [42], in that the former relies on a view that the rural regions are organisms characterized by resources, rights, society, and capital, or the three-dimensional rural space system based on culture, society, and material [43], for example. Nevertheless, both theories are complementary and based on the work of Ren [44]. This work adopts Mazoyer and Roudart's [1] viewpoint, based on the agrarian system theory, which builds multilayer factors that influence the agrarian scenario, adopting a sociological perspective that characterizes rural spaces during space and time, considering all determinant factors.

In ancient agrarian systems, the concern was only to produce enough food to meet the family's own caloric needs, and perhaps those of the community in which the individuals were inserted. The development of agri-food production evolved differently worldwide. Soil, climate, availability of plants, and cultural habits influenced the necessary practices to feed the people better. Some of them, even in the Neolithic period, stood out, whether they were more irradiating—such as the center of the Near East, the Central American, Chinese, and New Guinean focuses—or those less irradiating centers such as the South American, North American, and Thai [1]. Such dispersion of agricultural development throughout history is so relevant that some researchers have theorized its relationship with civilizations' linguistic and cultural development [45].

The close relationship between cultural development and food has led to the characterization of certain products in specific regions. In addition, ancient records attribute qualitative aspects to the origins of some products, such as Lebanon cedar, Corinthian wine, or Brindisi oysters. Thus, historically, peoples' production, preparation, and consumption of food have been related to agrarian systems specific to each region. Some even gained notoriety for having specific characteristics that differentiated them from others.

However, the world has changed over the centuries. Civilizations have become less rural and more urban. Throughout history, some agricultural revolutions were crucial to multiply food production and favor urban centers. These revolutions allowed more outstanding production in the same areas due to new technologies. Therefore, less labor force was needed.

Revolutions such as the Neolithic, with sedentism, were significant. Even in antiquity, agrarian systems with the use of fallow and light traction allowed exponential gains, followed by the use of heavy traction, which brought about a new revolution in the Middle Ages. However, at the end of this last period, there were differences between regions—especially in Europe. With the use of new equipment more suitable for cultivation, productivity gains were accentuated, which led to changes in the social relations of the land and the structure of the domain. This resulted in the concentration of areas in the possession of dominant classes, characterized by an individualistic logic, starting to employ labor in place of land possession by the working class. This practice reduced the need for territorial expansion for agricultural production, thus replacing slash-and-burn methods.

A portion of the population started to concentrate on other functions in urban centers related to rural activities, such as boroughs. Thus, with this new urban mass, after introducing liberal ideas and the allowance of broader practices of production, trade, and circulation of goods and people, a new era was taking place in Europe. This new era began with a new agricultural revolution—the first of modern times. The substitution of systems without fallow for rotating crops with forage and grain provided new impetus in food production. This gain provided the industrializing cities with the necessary supply and, consequently, also provided more appropriate implements to increase production.

The growing urban concentration sustained by the supply of these new productive forces boosted the industrialization of large centers until the end of the 19th century. This achievement enabled the development of productive chains linked to the land, such as textiles, beer, sugar, and alcohol, which was only possible with abundant productive surpluses. The limitations of the production system were concentrated on the tools, since the properties used were mainly private, and labor was also employed, despite some regions remaining focused on family farming, lacking technology and tools. This all changed substantially with the Industrial Revolution.

With the Industrial Revolution in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not only industry and commerce were affected. New agricultural implements such as plows, seeders, and harvesters entered the agricultural equation, transforming the European and North American scenarios through the new steel technology available. However, at this point, another parallel phenomenon also occurred: Fordism, which also impacted the agrarian sector and changed the logic of food production. From that time, the world started to adopt a Weberian perspective of rationalization, which also applied to agriculture and food, although lacking a general theory for Fordist agriculture [46].

Commodities are defined generically as any goods that can be traded. However, the term is commonly used to refer to raw materials or goods with aspects and characteristics so uniform and abundant that they do not depend on the place of production. Therefore, they are traded in large volumes, with a constant flow and circulation throughout the planet. This also implies that, due to both the quantity available on the market and the intense standardization, their producers are only price-takers. In the agricultural case, coffee, soybeans, wheat, sugar, alcohol, corn, and orange juice can be categorized as commodities.

Beyond Gramsci's [47] concept of Fordism—of extreme rationalization of production and consumption through cultural and political means, based on Taylorism—this new logic of conceiving the global system also affected agrarian systems. The main argument relies on the transformation of the production and consumption paradigm towards massification. The process of commoditization changed the perspective of food around the globe.

Authors such as Kenney et al. [48] argue for the contribution of American agriculture to the production and consumption markets of undifferentiated commodities, while Potter and Tilzey [49] point to neoliberalism, neomercantilism, and multifunctionality on the European side. Both works see the succession of events from Fordism, post-Fordism, and globalization as a global phenomenon of standardization and homogenization of food, endorsed by institutions and states that affect the market unevenly.

This sequence of phenomena that affected rural regions, agricultural production, and food consumption resulted in reducing product diversity and local factors' influence on the product. The effects of massification and standardization are based on efforts to minimize differences between products so that they can be commercialized on a global scale. With the minimization of differences between products globally, there has also been a consequent change in agrarian systems to meet the productive demand. Due to the new logic of overproduction, there is homogenization, and consequent decreases in the number of species consumed, varieties produced, and differences in production. Thus, the forms of production are reduced to as few varieties of agrarian subsystems as possible. Mechanization becomes predominant, reducing differences in cultural treatment, the influence of edaphoclimatic conditions, the need for uniformity, and the social factors inherent in the attribution of value, reducing the relative workforce in the system.

However, according to the theory of agrarian systems, changes can occur as a natural part of development, despite the agrarian systems' consistency. These systemic changes have triggered shifts in trade blocs, globalization, liberalization, agro-technologies, societal demands, and climate change [50–54]. The more specific the system, the more complex it is. For example, agri-food producers with geographical indication (GI) registration base their products' differentiation centrally on natural, human, and historical factors [55].

The first item—the natural factors—is the concept of an "essential link between the location in which a food or beverage is produced, and its quality or other consumer attributes" [24]. The second, known as savoir-faire, refers to the techniques, materials, and production methods used. The last considers immeasurable elements attributable to the producing region's culture or history, which are applied to the product, making it notorious. Finally, the sum of the three composes what Allaire [6], based on the work of Goodman [56], qualifies as "the immaterialization of food and the institutionalization of quality"—a concept that considers environmental aspects such as soil and climate, but also cultural and human factors, characterizing intrinsic characteristics of agri-food products, and capable of providing specific regional qualities.

Therefore, such elements are central to the creation of more flourishing and more complex agrarian systems. Each of them directly influences the product, and provides a myriad of combinations that generate unique products.

The natural factors are the environmental aspects that qualitatively influence the products; this is what Josling [24] refers to as terroir. However, this is not entirely accurate; it represents a set of environmental factors—such as soil, climate, light, altitude, physical elements, and others—that yield specific characteristics to the products grown there. It is the foundation that gives uniqueness to each and every product coming from the field. It is so crucial and particular to the characterization that it cannot be reproduced elsewhere.

Savoir-faire relates to the labor put into practice. The concept refers to the human factors that can produce "typicity", or unique, traditional character [55]. It is the work of cultural bias in a geographic location that implies a historical process of knowledge construction over time, as endorsed by Guy [57].

The last item regards the cultural aspects that are embedded in the construction of such products. Sometimes referred to as "history" [55,58], it is more appropriately called culture, since history is part of cultural construction. Despite disagreements on a definition of the concept, this work adopts the understanding of Tylor [59], addressed by Abdel-Hadi [60]

(p. 12) as "that complex which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Therefore, in spaces where the simplification of systems predominates, agri-food production is based on commodities in large portions of land, tending not to have areas for production imbued with the necessary conditions for more complex products, such as those with GI. Thus, there is a tendency to widen the scope of prevailing and profitmaximizing systems in capitalist societies. Hence, with the decrease in the capacity for interaction between individuals in the rural space due to the increase in crops, decrease in the number of farmers, reduced exchange of experiences, and suppression of environmental factors in food, there is less terroir variability and, consequently, a smaller market for these products. In the long run, this fact tends to compromise the variability of these products and their markets.

Consequently, the direction of these markets is profoundly affected by the guidelines and regulations promoted by local, national, and regional policies. In this way, the development of agricultural markets centered on the production of commodities, or of products with culturally added value, is constructed according to the predominant ideas of the institutions. Thus, institutions that are socially oriented towards consolidating the maintenance of hegemonic systems tend to suppress systems that favor differentiated products and markets in the long run. Therefore, the maintenance or alteration of these systems must, necessarily, go through the institutions' composition to represent the intended interests.

There are discussions in academia about the concept of terroir containing other factors. Terroir is a traditional concept widely used to describe the particularities of GI products; it is widely used in the wine market, although it can be applied to all agri-food products [61–63]. It regards the relationship between the product's quality or taste and its geographic origin [64]. However, the concept of terroir addressed by this work is close to that used by Barham [55], which considers not only environmental aspects reflecting the product's quality, but also human and cultural factors that give particular attributes to agri-food products or wines. Therefore, dividing the concept into three parts allows for a better understanding of all influencing factors, broadening the comprehension of the complexity embedded in these products. Indeed, environment, savoir-faire, and culture are embedded concepts that comprise the GI market. Such products go beyond Marx's comprehension of homo faber, due to a complex, embedded paradigm of equally complex agrarian systems, needing a consideration of their roots in order to fully comprehend the issues of this market. To summarize the understanding of the differences in the formation of both types of agri-food market, Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual chain of both paths.
