Agriculture: Once Upon a Man
Agriculture: Once Upon a Man
Nature is a set of Rules and Principles that, after a few decades of cultural obscurantism, are returning to the surface of our Life. Our civilization is experiencing one of the greatest and most significant periods of historical transition and this transition, like the mute, brings with it the wind of great changes and a new era.
So also Agriculture, perhaps the most fascinating human Science, will undergo a profound change in the alveo of an evolution towards a more concrete application than ever of the Rules and Principles of Nature.
To do this you need to understand why biodiversity; In a broad sense, the principle of the diversity of the manifestation of Life and, through its understanding, a new holistic path towards a new agricultural economy. It is no longer made of stupid, myopic, insignificant and inadequate financial indices, but towards new generation indexes and algorithms where ecosystemic indices such as biodiversity, fertility, human systems integration, agricultural vocation, city / country balance, thermodynamics of agricultural systems etc. . Will be the basis of the production choices and the rural planning guidelines.
A landscape that will upset today’s notions of the profitability of investment in agriculture, economic and financial indices of agricultural systems (lacking ecological and ecosystemic orthodoxy) and the parameters on which today is predominantly the whole European and Western policy.
This upheaval is now visible in the failure to pursue investment policies in agriculture (see the various rural development programs “PSR”) and the support criteria of the entire scaffolding of the CAP Community Agricultural Policy.
For this reason, the researchers and scientists of free thinking, especially in this country, must be stimulated towards a concrete action of global reconsideration of the concept of Agricultural Economics.
This consideration is as disturbing as in the analysis, evaluation, balance sheets and the use of financial algorithms there are no criteria for calculating and evaluating systems on:
- Economic value of biodiversity (including agriculture);
- Ecological indices;
- Food quality of agricultural systems;
- CO2 emissions of agricultural systems and the application of the Kyoto Protocol in the sector;
- And many others, some of whom studied at the Graduate Degree in Agricultural and Forestry Sciences but who have fallen today into “disgrace.”
We can say that economics and finance have submerged even Science and Consciousness.
Just as the assessment of the most important aspects of Agricultural Science, such as the value of biological diversity in agriculture, has been virtually neglected in the appraisal indices (and therefore scores) of the PSR’s Bands (incredible but true).
The legislation in force in the field of protection and valorisation distinguishes the concept of local varieties, which is closely linked to the area of origin (bioterritory), as a place where local varieties have adapted and characterized in time thanks to Local farmers’ action and conservation variety, meaning those at risk of extinction. Of all this, nothing is visible in the parsing parameters of the PSR Bands.
Now since the protection and enhancement of natural resources imply, in the temporal perspective, alternative choices of the use of environmental resources, it is necessary to coordinate the public intervention policy for the environment with the economic development strategies in order to ensure living conditions Acceptable, not only of agricultural systems to the whole community.
The primary sector of agriculture that has always had a widespread impact on the use of natural resources, exercises, together with other productive sectors, an overall impact on the territory increasingly accentuated, also visible during and after the phases of Disposal of agricultural activities.
In the past (and unfortunately, as has been said in the present), the scientific approaches to deepen the relationship between agriculture and natural resources, with rare exceptions, were mainly aimed at obtaining more and more immediate economic returns, overlooking not only the Negative aspects, but also positive impacts.
In recent decades, however, the awareness of emerging issues from the complex relationship between agro-forestry activities and the conscious and planned use of the globally understood land, including natural and man-made resources, has been expanded.
These issues are part of the scientific debate on the broad theme of sustainable development, towards which international and national policy choices must be increasingly geared towards.
If you do not go out of the ardor introduced by modern financial science, misunderstoodly applied to natural systems (which is also agriculture), we risk to even grow even more this primary and fundamental sector of the human economy but also the dragged Humanity From ignorant and unscrupulous men (the two things lead to the same result) to an unprecedented historical minimum.
Guido Bissanti