Agricultural biodiversity: the criterion adopted in the RDP is incorrect
Agricultural biodiversity: the criterion adopted in the RDP is incorrect
According to recent ISPRA data, the specialization and intensification of agriculture, as well as the globalization of the agricultural economy, have produced a serious loss of biodiversity, with a decrease, for example, of the ornithic populations of the agricultural environment. This loss must be reversed with the creation of agricultural models that do not follow the market needs (homologation, specialization, monoculture, etc.) and those of the GDO.
Despite this information is contained in the SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) preliminary to the RDP, the basic structure of the same contradicts these assessments by implementing (especially through the scores) agricultural models that respond effectively to the needs of agri-food quality dictated by the market and by the GDO and not to those of agricultural biodiversity and ecological protection.
In this way we will see an incredible expenditure of European resources that instead of redirecting the agroecological sector towards a virtuous system will further aggravate the conditions. All this in spite of the alarms of the FAO and other international organizations that see in organic agriculture and the increase of agricultural biodiversity the only solution to the negative spiral implemented in fact with the Treaty of Rome in 1960. The farms that in fact pass from the current farming methods to biological ones see in a short time the increase in biodiversity measured as an increase in the number of species present, from bacteria to plants to mammals and birds.
In fact, it is known that natural cultivation methods (which can only be implemented with particular business organizations that include consociations, agricultural biodiversity, etc.) have a positive influence on biodiversity at all stages of the food chain. There are three reasons that can explain the positive influence of organic farming on nature. The first is that no synthetic pesticides and fertilizers are used. The second is that there is a sympathetic management of nearby areas not cultivated, such as ditches, hedges, ponds, which contribute to accommodate various animal and plant species. The third, finally, is that the use of techniques of natural cultivation is accompanied by the practice of breeding, thus further diversifying the presence of habitats on agricultural land that are enriched with animal and plant species.
The structural funds of the RDP tend to instead create completely different production algorithms, where the indigenous products, the typicality, the increase of agricultural biodiversity, etc. are not included in the scores and closures of supply chains.
A disaster without any scientific and technical foundation that will increase the distance rural system and social system.
According to ISPR data, it is clear that in Europe, only in the last quarter of a century, due to the expanding of intensive farming practices, there has been a strong impoverishment in terms of variety and quantity of species present in the countryside.
Therefore, a total revision of the Rural Development Programs is urgent, but also a governance of the process that seems to have escaped the logic of real Politics and Planning at all levels from the European to the peripheral one.
Guido Bissanti