Ritorno alla terra: problematiche legate all’accesso alla terra

Abstract

The actual viability of a peasant agriculture implies an accessibility of land that is now far from obvious, especially in contexts marked by proximity to centres or by remarkable landscape beauty, where the stronger is the tendency to a collapse of historic rural structures or to final de-ruralisation. In such contexts access to land - both as actual availability of agricultural lots on the sale or rental market, and as purchase and management chances for people without high liquid assets wishing to set up or manage a farm - is a crucial point about the ‘re-conquest’ of countryside by the manifold universe of ‘neo-rurality’: through a comparison among local circumstances and regulations, the paper considers the issue with reference to the province of Florence and Florentine Chianti, territories which are emblematic for the conflict between two opposite concepts - and two opposite practices - of a “return to earth”.