PhD candidate biologist Maria Șevera presented her doctoral research on the coexistence between modern utilities and traditional mountain agriculture — a topic at the heart of the sustainability question for Romanian rural communities.
The challenge
Mountain agriculture in Romania carries centuries of traditional practices — small-scale livestock farming, hay meadows, hand-harvested orchards — that produce both food and cultural landscape. At the same time, the arrival of modern utilities (irrigation systems, automated equipment, connected sensors, digital marketplaces) creates pressure on these traditional practices: either through replacement, or through hybrid coexistence.
Why it matters
How do we modernise without erasing? How do we bring digital tools into communities where their introduction risks disrupting long-standing ecological balances and social structures? The research investigates the conditions under which the two systems — modern utilities and traditional mountain agriculture — can coexist and even reinforce each other, particularly in the Maramureș region.
Relevance for COSA
The Local Producer Marketplace (Use Case 3 of the COSA project) is precisely an example of a digital tool designed to support, rather than replace, the traditional ecosystem of local producers — exactly the kind of question Maria Șevera's doctoral research addresses from a biological and ecological perspective.
Presentation slides
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