Beyond Farmers

Author: Caterina Candiani, Alberto Trauzzi

Manufactured by: RAMI

Distribution year: 2025

Language: Italian

Episode: Beyond Agroecology: between Food Sovereignty and Gastronomic Sciences

Guest episode: Paola Migliorini

Podcast description

“Beyond Farmers” for RAMI (Agroecological Microfarm Network Italy) is a podcast that talks about entrepreneurship and sustainability in order to understand the dense web of social, economic and environmental relationships that underlie them.

Thanks to the space dedicated to interviews with experts and professionals in the agribusiness sector-such as farmers and processors of agricultural products-their stories are given voice, so as to encourage an exchange of ideas between those who are planning to start a business and those who have already started one.

The story of the various entrepreneurial projects and the challenges they entail, as well as the different visions inherent in the future of agriculture and the agribusiness sector, is intended to develop critical thinking in listeners: in fact, talking about food also means talking about the way we buy and consume. The main goal is to make us all a little more aware, with the ultimate goal of creating, together, a better food system.

Episode Description.

Featured in the excerpt “Beyond Agroecology: between Food Sovereignty and Gastronomic Sciences” from Episode 16 “What is Agroecology?” of Beyond Farmers is Paola Migliorini, associate professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo.

In the episode, the lecturer delves into different aspects of agroecology, stressing theimportance of what we put on our plates-not only with respect to climate and environmental impact, but also with respect to food sovereignty and the gastronomic culture of each people-highlighting the link between productivity from different agricultural practices and diet , and finally emphasizing how gastronomic sciences manage to go beyond agroecology, embracing not only biological but also cultural biodiversity.

Regarding the environmental and climatic impact of different agricultural practices, it was pointed out that there are several studies that state that, for the same area, organic and agroecological practices result in lower yields than conventional agricultural practices, configuring themselves as “less sustainable.”

The expert, however, points out that the discussion on productivity cannot be separated from the type of diet: to reconfirm this, it has been shown that if a vegetarian diet or an omnivorous diet with 20 percent animal products were to be led, the per capita land requirement for healthy nutrition would amount to only 0.20 hectares, compared to the 1.20 hectares expected instead if a diet with 70 percent animal-derived products were to be led, constituting, moreover, an unsustainable scenario for feeding the entire world population.

Through the scientific evidence presented, therefore, the possibility of converting the world’s agricultural area to organic by changing the type of diet is illustrated, a circumstance that, among other things, would pose a solution to the problem of feeding the entire human population.

Another study, which was conducted considering the type of diet and the gradient of organic percentage of the plate and their impact on land requirements, showed that, compared to conventional, organic requires a small percentage more land while resulting in drastically lower energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions than conventional farming practices .

It is thus apparent that the discourse on productivity determined by agricultural practices must necessarily be put in relation to the environmental impact on climate, energyrequirements and the type of diet being conducted.

Professor Migliorini then reports an alarming fact: it would seem, in fact, that the world’s industrial meat production consumes about half the area of Argentina and Brazil to produce GMO corn and soybeans. We speak in this case of “ghost hectars,” an expression that designates the hectares that are not used to feed the local population but whose products are destined to be sold to large production industries and exported, leading to high environmental as well as social damage.

It is essential, therefore, to pursue an agroecological approach of diversification where the system has low external inputs: in this case, diet modification, in fact, has a strong impact on our health, as well as on the environment.

The lecturer then goes on to clarify the concept of “food sovereignty,” a term that outlines peoples’ right to food that is nutritious on the one hand, but also culturally appropriate, accessible, sustainable and ecological on the other: it is the right to be able to choose one’s food and production system. It is exactly the opposite of the concept of “colonialism,” in which is inherent an idea of the coercion of peoples: food sovereignty is the right to choose what you grow and what you eat.

Of course, in today’s globalized world, it is difficult to protect this right and, indeed, international laws and political agreements often go in exactly the opposite direction. The concept of food sovereignty, however, should ideally apply to all countries: the goal would be to create an agricultural and food system that serves the people who cultivate and feed it, so as to create overall global welfare.

It is then good to clarify that the concept of food sovereignty is declined into food sovereignty with respect to seeds-that is, being able to have access to soil genetic resources-with respect to land, with respect to resource management, and from a cultural point of view. Finally, the professor concludes her talk by pointing out how often agroecology is limited to considering the food system while gastronomic sciences, in a holistic view, also embrace culture, understood as food preparation: thus, we do not speak only of biodiversity, but rather of biological-cultural biodiversity as each individual agricultural variety is linked to a specific food processing and preparation.

Listen to the epiosodium here: