The Meatrix is committed to helping educate people around the world about the issues of sustainability, specifically in terms of food production and consumption. This action page is a way for us to communicate with the concerned people in Italy, to encourage them to take action locally, but also to exchange information and experiences at the international level. We hope to create a network of concerned people, communities and organizations around the world that all join together to promote more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.
This action page will provide you with information on the agricultural situation in Italy, on like-minded organizations that operate in the country, as well as with background information about the Meatrix series. Please send us any information or updates you feel should be added to Giuseppina Pagano at gpagano@fwwatch.org
About Italy
A large farming community. Politics or resistance?
By Antonio Onorati – Centro Internazionale Crocevia
With a Utilised Agricultural Area (UAA) about half of France’s, Italy has more than three times as many agricultural holdings1. More farms on less land: this is truly a miracle of resistance. But how long will this last without a radical change in agricultural policy?
UUA extension and number of farms per country |
||
Country
|
UUA ha
|
Number of Farms |
Spain |
25 596.000 |
1 287.000 |
France |
27 856.000 |
664.000 |
Italy |
15 355.000 |
2 152.000 |
Fonte: Eurostat 2000 |
||
Between 1982 and 2000, Italy lost 20% of its farms and 4 million hectares of UAA. In only three years, between 2000 and 2003, Italy lost more than 13%
of farms – at this rate, the number of agricultural holdings will be reduced by 85% within 20 years, leaving less than 400.000 farms. Farms with less than 20 ha will be doomed. Remaining and prospering will be those farms of 50 ha and more, following the dictate of “concentration of holdings and the resource land”.
However, it is the small farms, those with less than 20 ha, that take up the sheer totality of work and employment in the agricultural sector. Their disappearance will therefore entail an inexorable process towards an economic, social and environmental desertification of the “beautiful agricultural landscape of Italy”. It will also wipe out the capacity to produce that “Italian quality” of food that has its foundations in the territory, in the diversity of agricultural systems and in the decentralisation of industrial transformation.
Although not comparable to increases registered in the UK or Eastern European countries, the average farm size in Italy has increased by 10.6%, (from 5.6 ha to 6.2 ha). It is important to note that this increase in farm size is unevenly distributed in the country, with the North recording a rise of 17.5%, central Italy 16.5%, and Southern Italy, 7.6%. This is the result of the policies that aim at “improving the competitiveness” of farms.
If we confront these data with the overall economic dimension2, of farms, we observe a significant increase at the national level (2.0%), thanks mainly to the regions of Central and Southern Italy (5.0% and 9.5% respectively). Northern Italy, on the other hand, registers a decrease of 4.9%. In other words, agricultural holdings in the North increase their land size by 17.5%, but decrease their economic dimension by 4.9%. Simply put: Farms in the North accumulate land in order to accumulate Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) premiums. They do not valorise the additional productive potential, but only augment their share of land annuity. These are the competitive and modern “business operations” that will survive the “mattanza” (extermination) in the coming 10 years.
Up until the latest CAP reform and until there existed an alternative to the absolute domination of “contract farming” (in Italy rebaptised “accordo di filiera” – supply chain agreement), small- and medium-sized family farms could survive without the help of any special support policies (which never existed in Italy). This was possible thanks to interstices in the market (local or national, at times even international as for fruits and vegetables) and to the possibility of reorganising production: by reducing capitalisation and by increasing the working load for the farmer, his family or the seasonal worker.
Employment in the agricultural sector |
|||
Year
|
Total
|
Agriculture
|
|
1993 |
20.765 |
1.363 |
|
1994 |
20.393 |
1.290 |
|
1995 |
20.240 |
1.217 |
|
1996 |
20.328 |
1.164 |
|
1997 |
20.384 |
1.132 |
|
1998 |
20.591 |
1.091 |
|
1999 |
20.847 |
1.029 |
|
2000 |
21.210 |
1.014 |
|
2001 |
21.604 |
1.018 |
|
2002 |
21.913 |
990 |
|
2003 |
22.241 |
967 |
|
Fonte: ISTAT |
|||
A new phase is now being heralded, characterised by the reduced ability for national farmers to sell on the internal agro-food market: Our food consumption habits are increasingly catered for by supplies originating outside the country. National agro-food holdings are losing shares in the internal market, all to the benefit of large transnational retailing systems.
Moreover, the generation leap will cause a significant flight of farmers from rural areas, with impoverishment of the said territories ensuing. This will deprive small- and medium-sized farmers of the possibility to look for extra-agricultural revenues, which plays a fundamental role in the farmers’ resistance. An agriculture endowed with many farmers - so far a reality in Italy, certainly at the highest level among industrialised countries - would no longer be possible.
In 1993, employment in the agricultural sector represented
6.5% of total employment. In 2003, it represented only 4.4%,
while overall employment increased by 7%.
Without appropriate policies aiming exclusively at supporting small- and medium-sized farms, Italy too will soon have an agriculture without farmers.
Sources:
