Industrial agriculture and local farming communities: a complex relationship that must define its own balance point, squeezed between large-scale production needs and the protection of soil, health and territorial cohesion. The meeting-debate titled “For a peasant agriculture in Chianti,” organized by the Chianti senza Pesticidi committee and Legambiente Chianti Fiorentino, and attended by Fausto Ferruzza, president of Legambiente Toscana; Lorenzo D’Avino, agriculture manager of Legambiente Toscana, was based on these crucial issues; Maurizio Mazzariol of the national association of organic and biodynamic producers Altragricoltura Bio; Giovanni Pandolfini of Garanzia Partecipata; Claudio Pozzi of Rete Semi Rurali; Francesco Romizi of ISDE Medici per l’Ambiente; and Carlo Triarico, president of the Association for Biodynamic Agriculture.
The reflection focused on one of Italy’s most prestigious wine-growing areas, where, however, there is no shortage of critical issues regarding the environmental impact of production, from the use of chemical treatments to soil erosion phenomena to the poor circularity of resources (with shoots and marc considered as waste and not used as compost for soil fertility). Alongside this is the biodistrict, established in 2016, which should increasingly value the participation and protection of small farms in their being quality-oriented and not maximum yield-oriented.
Some data emerged from the meeting that should give pause for thought: 70 percent of the food produced in the world comes from peasant agriculture while only 30 percent is produced by industrial agriculture, which, however, uses 80 percent of the soil. This is also why, according to Carlo Triarico, president of the Association for Biodynamic Agriculture, “food sovereignty” means making food communities from the bottom up, producing what is really needed at the right price and valuing the traditional dynamics of local farming communities: “The true circular economy is the one of life, the regenerative one of seeds, while the industrial process by its nature creates waste. True organic reuses.”
