In the international year of family farming, let’s launch a campaign in defense of the role of the farmer for food sovereignty and the protection of the territories.
Phrases like "we support agriculture" or "give land to those who cultivate it" are no longer sufficient. If you really care about ecosystems and the future of the next generations, we have to support those who cultivate the land with respect and dedication.
Indeed not all agricultural products are sustainable from a social, human and environmental point of view. We can even speak of discrimination taking place between two models of different size and quality: the model of intensive industrial agriculture and the rural agriculture. The first model, the one that is dominant and supported by large financial groups, requires an approval of crops and seed, a production released from the real needs, and uses methods of cultivation anything but harmless to the environment, people and the fertility of the land. Today instead we need to give full recognition to the other model, the one that retrieves the figure of a contemporary peasant, whose purpose is to live everyday in his place, to cultivate and to raise his family and to sell their products in a fair manner. A personality that is still present in Italy, more than in other European countries, but that is not protected by law.
The popular Campaign on rural agriculture, to which since its inception we gave our support, was established in 2009 with the push of organizations working for sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty. The long work of member organizations has produced a bill introduced in Parliament on October 10, with the aim of giving legal status to the rural dimension as a valuable resource for our future. It is requested a law that as the developers say "recognizes and supports peasant farming in Italy, with appropriate standards for access to land, production and processing, for the defense of seeds and local breeds, for Small Businesses, for networks of solidarity economy. To stop the depopulation of the mountains and bring agro-biodiversity in the plains. "
This way we fight world hunger
Family farming can feed the world, industrial agriculture can not. After supportino through forced phases the industrialization of agriculture with the so-called green revolution of the '60s and '70s, including the FAO, the main UN body that deals with overcoming poverty and malnutrition, it had to change his mind.
After decades of glare it has recognized the failure of the agro-industrial model, rediscovering the role of small farmers, the only ones that allow you to conserve biodiversity, to guard the territory, supporting food sovereignty. Enhanced by this recognition we now have the duty to pass from words to facts, since 2014, has been named by the UN as the "International Year of family farming" with the aim to enhance the role of farmers at the household level in the fight against hunger and for the preservation of natural resources. In many developing countries of the world, those who are administrated by the family represent on average 80% of the total number of farms.
We're talking about small businesses in low-tech and consumption of capital, and with limited direct sales in territories often considered marginal. Farms forgotten at the margins of the productive economy, which in Italy are historically very strong. According to the recent census ISTAT on Italian agriculture, 67% of Italian farms had a gross income of less than EUR 10 000 and is by its very nature excluded from European incentive policies. To this must be added the auto-productions of many agricultural informal practices, which provide food for auto-consumption and non-monetary exchange and which have not yet been estimated. Can you still ignore a reality that, according to Istat, employs more than 3.5 million people?
Strategies and goals
The Common Agricultural Policy costs 60 billion per year for Europeans. Beyond the references to sustainability in agriculture and support for small businesses, the national and European regulatory body continues to support primarily a unique model of productive agriculture. The farms of which we speak instead bring forward a series of "other" values compared with production. Many of them are discovered to be multifunctional and to overcome the lack of services on a local scale. Others are manufacturers that make processing and sale of limited quantities of products in the circuits of short chain. They are people who need tax relief and simplification for the processing. "For this reason, the campaign moves with two goals," explains Roberto Schellino the national representative. "The first is to recognize and support the various peasant farming with a framework law. The second is the emanation of standards and adequate measures to cover individual needs.”
We move on two tracks, one of a legal kind to give a general overview and the recognition of an important socio-economic model. And one of the most practical nature, which requires a push of political legislation, with the adoption of individual measures that cover the different needs of this underwater world that can not afford to be subject to the same conditions as the large producers. "In agriculture, we need to act on several fronts because there are different skills," continues Schellino. "Some are ministerial, others, such as health, proper to the regions. At the regional level we are in fact already working on the issue of simplifying the rules governing the changes in the name of flexibility that European standards allow, but that in Italy are not applied enough. To different production types may correspond different regulations. Who makes or adopts the closed-loop self can hardly meet the same standards required for conventional company.”
It is not enough that it is small
The rural agriculture has different forms and expressions, mainly related to the forms of family, but not exclusively. These are mostly micro, but you can also include in this category the largest cooperatives, engaged in agri-ecology or that fit within an solidarity and shared economy.
In this sense, the campaign during his four years of life has had its own evolution. "The first petition was very focused on the micro-reality of small consumption or sale," says Schellino. "But this model has been questioned because it excluded some production that sold in the networks of consumption or local markets. Obviously we are talking in most of all about micro-enterprises or small businesses, but the distinction between micro and large net is not considered. The emphasis is on the ways of production and not on the size, because the small company can be inserted in rural agriculture or in industrial agricolture. Let's take an example: a family or small scale company can sell traditional varieties of apples or choose those who are patented, that can not be reproduces and in some cases can not even sold freely. In this case the manufacturing process fits the farming industry and not in agriculture farming ".
In this model agronomic practices should be conservative and sustainable, with the control of the reproductive cycle, through the reproduction of local seeds and breeds, or the direct conversion of its products. It is a conscious choice. And a real response to the continued depopulation of agricultural inland areas, with obvious repercussions on the social and environmental tissue: as employment benefit such as risk reduction, and therefore costs reduction, for the restoration hydrological, for the soil or the protection of biodiversity . In this process it is important that the consumer becomes aware of the fact that at stake there is the quality of our food, the beauty of the landscapes, self-sustainability and the relationship between town and country. That is why even your signature can count. To restart from the primary sector to the construction of a new world.
Let’s support the campaign for peasant agriculture
- Visit the website agricolturacontadina.terranuovaedizioni.it to sign the petition, read the latest updates and download the material in-depth.
- Pass the word!
The Committee of civil society subscription
2014 has been named the International Year of family to recognize the central role of family in the fight against hunger and for sustainable development. In all nations it has kicked off efforts to raise awareness on the part of public and private institutions. In Italy, the Italian civil society Committee for 2014 - International Year of family IYFF " was created as part of the Committee of Italian food sovereignty (CISA) and is open to membership by all those realities which are sympathetic to this agricolture. The Committee also partecipated to the path of the Campaign for popular peasant agriculture, sustaining it and collaborating with its action towards the Parliament, for approval of a Framework Law on peasant farming, as proposed by the popular Campaign.
Those who adhere to the popular campaign for peasant agriculture
Agribio Emilia Romagna, Antica Terra Gentile, the Italian Association of Organic Agriculture, Association La Spinosa of Mount Peglia, Association of Manufacturers Workers Agribusiness, Rural Association Italian Association of Italian Solidarity Campaign, Open Fields, C-Field Agriculture, International Centre Crossroads, Centre for the Study of Notebooks of Ontignano, Peasant civilization, Happy Hens Consortium the Consortium of Quarantine, Movement Decrescita Happy Florence, Motion Spider Web, Bioregional Network, Semi Rural Network, Earth Earth, WWOOF Italy
The Italian agricultural reality *:
- Companies who can not be qualified as business (gross income less than 10,000 €): 62%
- Intermediate Companies (gross income between 10,000 and 20,000 €): 16%
- Enterprises (gross income over € 20,000): 21%
*6th Istat census of agriculture in 2010
