Rigener-Action: When agriculture regenerates land and community'
Is there a way to produce healthy, nutritious food at a fair price that can adapt and even mitigate climate change?
Can agriculture and the agri-food system, now responsible for 24% of greenhouse gas emissions, be able to capture climate-altering gases and restore carbon stocks in the soil?
Two crucial questions to face and solve the challenges of this century and that relentlessly bring to the urgent need ofsensitivity, sustainability, care and regeneration.
A rigener-action that requires awareness and active participation and that cannot be lasting without being permeated through local territories and their community.
For this reason, at the end of January the Living Lab in Bologna reopened with the monthly appointments of “Food is a Conversation” – special edition RegenerAction, a theme that will accompany us throughout 2022 to reconnect the community and reflect together on the challenges of local and global food systems.
In his magical first appointment, with us in Bologna some custodians of the Mediterranean:
Serena Cilento of the New Cilento Agricultural Cooperative - "Al Frantoio" and Edmondo Soffritti of the Azienda Agricola La Petrosa, two pioneers of applied regenerative agriculture in the heart of the Cilento National Park and Vallo di Diano and leader of the movement Rareche Natural Rural Market, who told, shared and spread precious seeds of wisdom together with Francesco Mazzi young entrepreneur of the Agricultural Society Valbindola, in a small town in Romagna (Tredozio) and Cesare Zanasi, Associate Professor at the Department of Agro-Food Sciences and Technologies of the University of Bologna who has been studying "Eco-Regions" and development models based on regenerative agricultural practices.
A wonderful meeting moderated by our Alessio Corti, who directs from Pollica the Paideia Campus, and that opened the doors of inspiration, bringing concrete examples of success, to understand the needs, approach and opportunities that the model of regenerative rural development offers us today.
Regeneration is restoring broken relationships from the earth
"Today we are used to consuming with extreme simplicity rather than producing, we have lost the attachment to real things and what really happens in nature. There is a seasonality, a way of doing things. We have to go back to normal things, starting with the earth and the ground"- Serena Cilento
Returning to forms of regenerative agriculture means then restoring these broken relations with the earth and with the soil, because as he has masterfully explained Edmondo Soffritti, "regenerative agriculture means adopting all those practices aimed at preserving the vitality of the soil or increasing it".
Because a vital soil is not only naturally able to capture carbon, but a soil that is perfectly in harmony with the entire natural ecosystem, which is not a victim of erosion, which is rich in organic substance.
Those who work the land then become the custodian of such ecosystem processes and have the duty to promote minimal and surface processing, to reduce the mineralization of organic matter and soil erosion, to ensure proper water management, responsible for their state of health, use natural compounds to ensure the formation of humus and organic substance.
we are talking about long and complex processes, which go beyond the mere replacement of conventional agricultural methods by biological methodsbut restore the entire environmental and ecosystem complexity, thus returning a unique value: the value of resilience and resistance. Because if there is no doubt that intensive and monoculture crops can ensure greater yield and economic profit, they are also the main victims of invasions of alien species and diseases, that if aggressive and extended they can also risk bringing an entire economy to its knees.
Risks that are instead prevented upstream by those who, with care and attention, ensures a constant ecosystem balance.
Regeneration is to create soil suitable for the community
To understand deeply that working the earth means having a direct relationship with life that spreads and thrives even where hidden, starting from underground, brings with it an invaluable value: contribute to restore lost relationships between humans. Because since regenerative agriculture has taken hold, farmers work more motivated, there is a strong human value component that keeps them more united and rooted, less alienated, as our guests told us.
Networks of collaborations and cooperation that make companies and individuals feel part of a larger mission, such as that carried out by the Nuova Cilento Cooperative and its 400 members, or by the most recent Consortium of Francesco Mazzito unite growers and producers who are driven by the care of the ecosystem, to share experiences and skills, to exchange advice and good practices.
A way to hold together the community and the countries inhabited by it, to cultivate the social fabric as well as the land and remove the dangers of abandonment and depopulation, especially of small municipalities of inland and mountain areas. Ties that unite the community, which strengthen the relations between employers and employees, but also between producers and consumers.
"Today the relationship with the customer becomes more true because you are proud of the product, you can tell him what you are doing for his ecosystem and why you are doing it" shared Edmondo Soffritti.
Regeneration is to create, exchange and communicate the value of the entire territory
The bonds and peculiarities that characterize a territory can be easily identified in the dynamics between man and products of the earth, in the connections between the community, but also in the historical dimension, social, cultural, uniquely identifying a specific territory.
the Bio Districts, realities that are gradually taking hold both at international and European and national level, represent a perfect example of an application of extended and applied rigener-action to the entire territory: starting from organic and regenerative agriculture, the focus is to aggregate the will of farmers, trade associations, but also universities, local municipalities and all actors who have a direct and indirect relationship with sustainable development of the territory.
"Because regenerative agriculture regenerates not only the soil but also the relationships in the community and their territory"How did you stress the Professor Cesare Zanasi, that studies the dynamics of BioDistres since 2004, as innovative approaches to integrated and sustainable rural development.
These are processes in which the ****social, environmental, economic and ethical dimensions are perfectly harmonised and only solidify if communicated through the example of, creating a critical mass who can work in the network, who is able to implement a radical cultural change.
A process that inexorably takes time, like all natural processes, that feeds on that sense of complete community that we have forgotten, as he reiterated Serena Cilento: "the exchange is in our genetics, from the community bread that was exchanged in the street, to our grandparents who had the vegetable garden near the house and when they had too much salad they knocked on the door of the neighbor to share it".
A paradigm shift that consciapevolizzi and communicate the underlying values adequately, starting fromemulation of small regenerative agricultural modelssmall agricultural systems often located in marginal but completely regenerative areas, such as those that distinguish many Bio Districts like the one of Cilento, an area covering an area of 3,196 sq km, 36 municipalities, 400 organic farms oriented to multifunctionality.
this is the model of integral ecological regeneration that, from the Paideia Campus of Pollica, we are trying to implement precisely thanks to the collective and multidisciplinary effort of the various local players.
An approach that this week, on the occasion of the presentation of the Ismea Report - Qualivita 2021, was recognized as crucial to promote the real competitiveness of our nation also by theMr Oreste Gerini - General Director for Agriculture and the Minister for Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli. One that starts from the sustainability and quality of small productions, the heart of local territorial development.
A development that sees, in diversity, identity and rigener-action, the true resilience typical of Italy.
