Campaign for peasant agriculture

“There are an unknown number of people involved in small-scale agriculture, based around peasant work and the family economy, oriented towards own consumption and direct sales; this type of agriculture has low to no environmental impact, is based on a lifestyle of wellbeing, ecology, justice or solidarity, rather than amassing wealth or making profit; this kind of agriculture is almost invisible on a macroeconomic scale, but it is essential for keeping land fertile and cared for (particularly in hill or mountain areas, and in economically disadvantaged or marginalised areas), conserving the diversity of landscapes, plants and animals, to keep knowledge, techniques and local products alive and to keep the countryside and mountains inhabited.” (2009, introduction to the petition)

The campaign for peasant agriculture is run by a network of associations and peasants that is gathering new members every day. It fights for:

  • the kind of agriculture that risks disappearing under the weight of paperwork and burdensome tax, health and safety rules that are utterly inappropriate and disconnected from the peasant world;
  • the recognition of the peasant world, the recognition of peasant men and women and their social role, rooted in the land, so that this common good may be distinguished from the rules established for entrepreneurial, industrial agriculture;
  • the removal of bureaucratic and tax barriers that prevent peasants from doing their work and that threaten their very existence on Mother Earth.

A brief history of the peasant campaign

On 17th January 2009 the “People's Campaign for the Recognition of Peasants and to Free their Work from Bureaucracy” (press release 2009) was launched. Among the founding organisations supporting the initiative were: Associazione Antica Terra Gentile (Lessinia), Associazione Nazionale Civiltà Contadina, Associazione Consorzio della Quarantina (Liguria), Rete Corrispondenze Informazioni Rurali, Rete Bioregionale Italiana. The first supporters were the Critical Wine collective of Genoa and the Ruralpina network.

The group of member organisations began a petition in 2009 that led to an increase in the initiative's members and supporters, with a round of initial meetings held with the Ministry for Agriculture.

In 2010 an initial text was drafted that turned the contents of the petition into a parliamentary bill. The text (in Italian) is here. Successive changes of ministers and governments have interrupted the bill's progress through the ministries, so alternative routes were identified, leading, in 2013, to the drafting of the new Guidelines (see Press Release and Guidelines - in Italian), presented to parliament on 10th October 2013.

At the end of January 2014 (the Food and Agriculture Organisation's Year of Peasant Farming), publishing company AAM Terranuova set up another online petition to gather signatures in support of the campaign.

In October 2015 the Agriculture Committee in parliament began to study the draft bill on peasant agriculture, submitted by Mr Adriano Zaccagnini MP (read the proposed text (in italian) here).

Terra Nuova became a part of the campaign in 2015.

All the information presented here was taken from the website www.agricolturacontadina.org