Rural areas are facing vulnerabilities and changes caused by negative social, economic and ecological externalities resulting from industrial agriculture systems. Locally embedded farms and bottom-linked approaches such as social cooperatives that act in the field of social agriculture are small, but valuable models to counteract these trends. This article is based on a case study conducted within the transdisciplinary research and development project Unlocking the Potential of Social Agriculture (UPAS), 2017–2020—financed by the Free University of Bolzano. The main focus of the case study is to determine the impact of social agriculture initiatives on social and healthcare systems, the natural environment and the communities in which they act. Data collection includes a literature review, observations and interviews carried out on 35 case studies of social agriculture initiatives, mainly located in Italy. The field research points out that actors in the sector of social agriculture predominantly aim to integrate disadvantaged people socially and in terms of their labor, base their production on organic methods, and that social agriculture has the potential to foster eco-social transformation and development of rural areas by the combination of social and ecological concerns. Thus, we use the term “eco-social” agriculture to describe these approaches. Furthermore, five components of eco-social agriculture have been defined, which, together, offer an ideal set of acting principles, namely: (1) the empowerment and integration of disadvantaged people, (2) the promotion of environmentally friendly agricultural practices, (3) the protection of nature, resources and cultural landscape, (4) support to the local community, and (5) education for sustainable development.

中文翻译：

---

促进社会转型和环境可持续性的生态社会农业：UPAS 项目的案例研究

农村地区正面临工业农业系统造成的负面社会、经济和生态外部性所造成的脆弱性和变化。本地嵌入的农场和底层联系的方法，例如在社会农业领域发挥作用的社会合作社，虽然规模不大，但却是抵消这些趋势的宝贵模式。本文基于在博尔扎诺自由大学资助的 2017-2020 年解锁社会农业潜力 (UPAS) 跨学科研究和开发项目中进行的案例研究。案例研究的主要重点是确定社会农业倡议对社会和医疗保健系统、自然环境和他们所行动的社区的影响。数据收集包括文献综述、对主要位于意大利的 35 个社会农业举措案例研究进行了观察和访谈。实地研究指出，社会农业部门的参与者主要旨在使弱势群体在社会和劳动力方面融入社会，以有机方法生产，社会农业具有促进生态社会转型和发展的潜力。农村地区由社会和生态问题相结合。因此，我们使用术语“生态社会”农业来描述这些方法。此外，已经定义了生态社会农业的五个组成部分，它们共同提供了一套理想的行动原则，即：（1）弱势群体的赋权和融合，（2）促进环境友好的农业实践，