"Restoring identity to the Peasant"

Today I want to stop and think ... Sometimes it is necessary to make a point about their own experiences.

And 'well-known by now ... I love to visit its sites, talk to the farmers, those with a capital C. Listening to their stories, their stories, their outbursts ... I'm tired, angry, fought… I meccanismi contorti della politica e della burocrazia li attanaglia a tal punto da toglier loro la voglia di lottare. All this leads to isolate scattering energies, the good ones, those that something could still. Some are demotivated to the point of losing the passion, others sink, unable to bear the costs of management. Every time I feel like dying a farm is a wound to the heart, una sconfitta per l’Italia.

• Farmers' need to believe again "!
• You must "identify people who are able in which they can have faith", it is from there that you can, and that you must restart.
• You must create "networks that unite them with a new mindset".
• It 'important to "go in the same direction without scattering".

For many are a dreamer, a woman who makes poetry, that, driven by the enthusiasm and little experience, still believe that we can do it this Italy. I see it in their eyes when angry from what I hear, propose solutions. Too many twists criminals have ruined what our grandparents and our ancestors have built with toil.

Often debate on this topic, because the key to the problem must be found! Perché forse continuare a parlarne può indurre qualcuno a crederci! The signals are all right, young people are projecting more and more towards this sector. Just today I read an article on the rise of 26% enrollment at the University for undergraduate courses in agricultural and food sciences. E 'for this reason that I decided to bring some reflections on the rural world made in the various threads that I often find it to baste, to see if there is still a way to go ... I believe!

The job of the farmer, like the sailor and soldier, contains in itself a food for the soul: it is only to release him.”

Jean Guitton

• Teresio Nardi, Trustee of the Slow Food Oltrepà Pavese: “I'm from the land, I worked 38 years in school and I was very young; I have always given my students sincerity, I sent them a good example and passion for the job. Now I can devote my passion to the land where I was born and raised; I do it because I like it, I do not ask anybody anything and everything that gratifies me very…”

Our economic model has failed so many things, everything is seen as a function of income and all as productive tool. The land is not capital! I have always taught that a large part of the ground floor is natural – nature, non-renewable and thus be preserved with love and attention, more authoritative than others have told me, but how many times in the last fifty years there has been a political project in this sense. Another consideration: the farmer must be seen as a guardian of the environment and the territory, motivated and valued this in his work for this reason. Yet: the soil needs to produce food! No energy or building areas or warehouses… Yet: the food is a fundamental right (I was taught from birth that the food is not wasted) is not a bargaining chip. All this the real farmers know this and live badly the current situation.

It is not easy… the real farmers: those who cultivate the land, who believe in their work, that protect the environment and local traditions, which absorbed the culture of the land from their grandparents and their family's history; are also those who know the uncertainties of their goals, e le temono: seasons, le intemperie, drought, the grandine, the wind and everything that affects the life cycle of living beings that worked so hard to raise and protect their. Before feared only nature that is sometimes friend and sometimes enemy is; now also fear the “progress” that subtracts the ground, Freedom of seed, clean air, landscape, environment, Biodiversity; have often been deceived by technology. For all this it is difficult to engage, win their trust, make them believe that today there is someone who is on their side and wants to return to the land, environmental protection, the development of the territory and traditions, as well as a quality food and right that can only come from the work of “farmer”.

• Uploaded Louis, writer, journalist, oleologo, has published several volumes on olive oil. Collaborates with several Italian and foreign newspapers, with address books and articles. From 2003 directs the weekly online "Teatro Naturale", periodic specialized in agriculture, Power and Environment.

The trouble is that on the peasants continue to speculate. Ci vorrebbe una riformulazione delle associazioni di categoria non più adeguate ai tempi. Manage the bureaucracy and especially a lot of money, but do not dispense ideas, and most are no longer associated with their. I have a friend who was the founder of one of the three major existing associations, and which has now been cut off because it was considered “useless” as an intellectual. This is precisely the error; associations need to be guided by intellectuals who give an address and that they do so without fanfare, as happens. Io sono figlio di agricoltori e da fanciullo, and then a boy, I worked in the countryside; I know what it means, for this, knowing the needs of farmers are deeply worried about their. Today as yesterday, no one represents and protects. The same communication rather than help the farmer to take that step forward that fails to accomplish alone, it trivializes.

Non ha senso creare una nuova associazione, but it is urgent that change leaders, they are real farmers, Their first. Farmers at Heart, rather than in the form. It 'an obstacle course. I myself am I being punished for my writings with acts of hostility, ma not demordo, perché quando le idee sono buone, sooner or later everything goes in port. Today the farmer to be saved should be left free, but freedom is a goal difficult to achieve. To overcome the obstacles you need to make independent farmers, and independence is obtained with the certainty of income. Here lies the sticking point: so the money (a lot) given to agriculture, ends up in the wrong hands, and so farmers never gain their freedom. Non sono ottimista perché convinto che, as for the policy, nothing will change nell'associazionismo. I'm picking up new members of intellectuals from which I hope to take the "right force" to stimulate change. It is not easy. Rather, Italy is easier to change than not farming. Si tratta di un’impresa ardua. But I love a challenge, and I will get something, I'm sure ...

• Alfonso Pascale, Vice President of Zooprofilattico the regions of Lazio and Tuscany, member of the Permanent Table of the National Rural Network Partnership on behalf of the Social Network Farms. He collaborates with the National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA).

The associations were born in the last century all live a profound crisis of representation. Adapting to the current model of public intervention in agriculture (CAP subsidies), that destroy the social capital of rural, and in giving up change, have failed their essential function: produce relational goods and create bonds of solidarity.
Their position defense mechanisms of student welfare intervention in the economy is not derived (how to say hypocritically) by concerns for the fate of its members. Their conservative attitude is dictated only by the desire to defend the structure of its organizational structure, that have adapted over time to the management of certain services. Good people there in these organizations but are not able to provide real support to the farmers and the land they no longer have the trade union culture and professional to do it.
It should build new networks, a new civil society that is self-organize outside of the bonds that historically have been determined between the political system and society.

We do not know to read the wisdom that they have given us the farmers ...

Alfonso Pascale