Agriculture and Food - the rules by the Centre for Agriculture and Food, a contribution change
(Speech Councillor James Sanavio the conference inauguration on January 22 in Pisa)
As provincial administration, we considered it of extreme interest to ensure the participation and support in the work of the rules' Agriculture and Food, as an instrument of great importance for a variety of reasons which I will briefly give reasons.
We are experiencing an important transition: public policy support to agriculture and some signs of renewed attention and care are bringing to the knowledge that 100% of interests related to the quality of life and health of humans and the environment is linked to agriculture, its dual role of "place" of food production and care of the land and the environment. But as agriculture? And it is with respect to this question that I see one of the areas of activity and interest in the work of the Centre.
legislation relating to products intended for human consumption is concerned, essentially, on the one hand to protect consumers from health food and the accuracy of the techniques of advertising, and secondly to protect producers from unfair competition. All this was necessary even after the increasing expansion of the distance between the moments of production and processing compared to the places of purchase and consumption. Complicit in this situation, the introduction of industrial methods of production, storage and processing, development of the transport network, as a real business sector related to the agro-food, the spread of commercial distribution systems, including those related to market logic independent from production. Do not forget, the weight of "lobbies" in the agribusiness production rules, which, incidentally, are often the same chemical-pharmaceutical industry.
short, the model industrial agriculture that has emerged in recent decades has created a strong distance between production and consumption, and the regulatory framework is totally focused on this model. The boundaries of the model of industrial agriculture and the obvious environmental and social contradictions can be clearly explained by the contradictory nature of some data: 30% of total world pollution is produced by agriculture, as well as 70% of consumption drinking water depends on this type of industrial model of agriculture, 50% of grain produced on the planet is used for animal feed and not the human, and yet, ironically, the increase agricultural productivity has been accompanied by a steady growth of the population who suffer from hunger: they are over 1 billion people each year who risk death by hunger, a heavily contradicting the assumptions of the same "green revolution" of the 60s . Another important contradiction: the theme of wasted food. In Italy, compared to a gross marketable output value of around 45 billion per year, end up in landfills every day 4000 tonnes of food, for a value of € 4 billion a year. The very model of industrial agriculture determines the loss of biodiversity by simplifying / approval of the crops, which must be added to the complex subject intellectual property of the seeds (which deserves a specific study!). If we consider that this addition to the cost paid, for example., A producer of cow's milk is 8 euro cents per liter, compared with a production cost of at least 32 cents per liter, or the cost of a kg Wheat is now 15 euro cents, compared with about € 2 kg of bread (one considers that with 1 kg of wheat produces about 1 kg of bread!), with the consequent risk of abandonment of the countryside by farmers or non-collection of productions (eg oranges.) because it costs less left to rot, you can understand how it is necessary to rethink the model of production, but also our model of consumption . Yes, because the effects I mentioned, plus the health risks and increased incidence of food borne illness such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer. A concrete example comes from the U.S. with the "Fresh" in the city of New York, from health data on the incidence of diseases and feeding on the close relationship of dependency with the consumption of food stored and the excess of animal protein spent, the city government has established a program to restore the small neighborhood businesses in fresh food, with economic incentives for opening new businesses and a city planning specifically to facilitate the settlement.
The breaking point determined by the equilibrium model of industrial agriculture is near enough to think that in 2030 half the world's population will no longer have access to water and that in 2050 the population will increase by about 2.5 billion people (UN data). These figures alone make us understand how the production model is incompatible with the evolution described above relating to the availability of resources and demographic trends.
must therefore make a needed change from the perspective of cultural and productive working to build the conditions for the establishment of a new "pact" between consumers and producers, reconstructing both the conditions for economic revival of business and the industry. In other words, " back to eating what our ancestors ate ", in relation to the seasonality of production and land, could be the solution to many problems. It should be back at the center of our lives food, its production: the first function of agriculture, but must at the same time - and this is the second bet for the Centre's activities - agriculture and to combine the rules of 'power rules for governing the territory.
The complexity of the links and human and environmental consequences of agriculture, the starting point and premise of this intervention, called in a strong dall'interdisciplinarietà opening of the conference of the Centre, imposes the need for new organizational models, new partnerships governance and a "strategic thinking" and can misurasi with the complexity of the challenge. To put it in a formula, the key to political activity and function of the Centre lies in the concept of food sovereignty , the right of peoples to define their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution and consumption of food, in turn guaranteeing the right to food for the entire population.
Know and monitor the framework of rules that underpin agriculture and food policy to provide the information to develop new strategies and new rules. This is to express the hope that the Centre's activities. Its success may depend, at least in part, the construction of needed change.
James Sanavio
Councillor for Urban and Regional Planning, Rural Development of the Province of Pisa
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