Accesso e controllo della terra, il futuro che non arriva

Abstract

The use of land is the front line of a conflict between different models of agriculture and society. The concentration of land and the right to produce is the result of public policies and is the best way to organize agriculture according to the criteria and requirements of industrial production. With the perverse link between public funding, industrial agriculture and large scale farms, corporate control of the right to produce occurs at the expense of labor intensive farming and/or small scale farms. The processes of concentration of agricultural land do not involve only Italy but are embedded in a European context. Maintaining and increasing the number of small scale farmers in Europe is therefore a priority. They don’t need social policies but, on the contrary, agricultural policies apt to recognize and promote this type of farming systems. Access to private and individual land property in itself is no guarantee of liberation, it is the paradigm of “development” that determines production decisions and the use of soil, genetic resources, water and sun, that affects the work of the farmer and his family. There are alternatives to private property, to the individual monopoly of the land, based on a strong social contract to guarantee the certainty of use for the farmer.