A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #471 - Environment, Food, Climate - Returning to the Land. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

More than twenty years ago in 2005, with the Italian edition published 
in 2007 documentary filmmaker and sociologist Silvia Pérez-Vitoria 
published a book with the emblematic and provocative title, "The Return 
of the Peasants." Ten years later, in 2015, "Manifesto for a Peasant 
21st Century" revisited the theme with greater urgency, so much so that 
the scholar stated that without a return to the land, our societies risk 
collapse.
But today, in our society, faced with numerous crises from the 
environment to employment, from increasingly scorching climates to the 
impossibility of even producing the necessary food what reflection do we 
make on the land, what consideration do we have for the peasant world? 
It would seem that we have no reflection, no consideration for the 
peasant world: food, which in recent years has been the subject of a 
rhetoric based on "goodness, tradition, healthiness," seems disembodied 
by the labor, commitment, toil, and difficulties of those who produce 
it. Peasants are largely invisible, except when they are transformed 
into entrepreneurs, with an equally vacuous rhetoric that takes into 
account neither the real conditions in which they operate nor social and 
class relations. If this is the general picture, but if it is also true, 
as Silvia Pérez-Vitoria writes, that the 21st century will be peasant or 
it will not be, now that a quarter of a century has already passed, we 
should urgently ask ourselves where to start.
Agriculture has clearly undergone significant transformations, becoming 
highly mechanized and industrialized. Even small producers are somewhat 
enmeshed in the modernizing network, forced to resort to patented seeds, 
fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides. The agricultural landscape 
features large areas of monocultures aimed at export. To give just one 
example, consider viticulture in Sicily, what it has become over the 
last two decades: a successful transformation from an entrepreneurial 
perspective, driven by propaganda and branding. However, alongside or as 
an alternative to this system, there exists a network of small farmers 
who produce and work on a local level, often rejecting the productivist 
logic of the industrial system, maintaining a direct relationship with 
those we call consumers, within which mechanisms operate that go beyond 
simple utility. Globally, it is precisely small-scale agriculture that 
provides jobs and food for the majority of the population. In Sicily and 
Italy, too, peasant production plays an important role. Here, then, 
could be a first step toward a more conscious return to the land: 
supporting, strengthening, and incentivizing peasant agriculture 
networks in various ways. It's not easy, but it's something that already 
exists in essence, characterizing places and territories. Perhaps, on 
the one hand, we should remove them from the pressures of branding, 
which are nevertheless present in some contexts, and on the other, we 
should work to make these networks more explicit, more solid, turning 
them into a political space for discussion and action.
Another issue is raising the issue of land use and access. While the 
idea of agrarian reform as it was conceived in the twentieth century may 
seem outdated, in reality the issue of land concentration is as relevant 
as it was yesterday. Unfortunately, land workers, peasants as a social 
class, have disappeared from the collective imagination, reduced to 
extras or heroes whose stories are exemplary, suitable for television 
programs for the general public. But would it be possible, urgent, and 
necessary today to rebuild a peasant movement capable of restoring the 
centrality of the land, identifying it as a way out of the current 
crises, and redefining new social models and relationships that pursue 
autonomy, food sovereignty, and reconnection with nature? This is a 
question we must ask ourselves, a reflection we must initiate, one that 
must certainly transcend the narrow confines in which it occurs and 
transform it into a public discussion and a political project.
Because the point isn't simply to establish peasant production models 
within the existing market, for a more equitable and sustainable 
production system, as is often claimed, but to make the return to the 
land the key to a more general and radical transformation of society. 
The topic is vast, and reflection is just beginning, although there is 
no shortage of interesting examples in Italy and elsewhere. For now, 
we're leaving the conclusions of this article to Silvia Pérez-Vitoria: 
"In the future, societies may be forced to choose between industry and 
agriculture. They certainly won't be able to continue with the existing 
model. This implies an energy that will eventually become unavailable, a 
consumption of natural resources that competes with the survival of 
humanity (bread or smartphones?).[...]Industrial agriculture isn't even 
capable of feeding the population, since that's not its objective. 
Alternatives exist. They come from farmers, from indigenous populations. 
They revive age-old traditions that make industrial agriculture an 
unfortunate parenthesis in the history of humanity.[...]We must have the 
courage to say that we were wrong and that in any case we won't get far 
by continuing down this path. So why not start again from the 
foundations of life on Earth, which presuppose respect, balance, and 
consideration of people's multiple visions of creation?[...]We must 
recognize that when economic and social crises worsen, people return to 
the land."1 1 Silvia Pérez-Vitoria, Manifesto for a 21st-Century 
Peasantry. Jaca Book, Milan 2016, pp. 119-122.

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