Geotema 52 – The relationship between Food – Agriculture – Environment compared with the new Common Agricultural Policy

Maria Gemma Grillotti Di Giacomo

The relationship between Food – Agriculture – Environment compared with the new Common Agricultural Policy

Abstract: Food – Agriculture – Environment are mutually connected with an organic, unbreakable, complex bond. Their balance depends not only on pedologic and climate factors or the degree of agricultural techniques development but above all on food processing and commercial policies carried out by National Governments and International Bodies. In order to protect availability, accessibility and quality of food processing products is necessary the contribute of political legislation. In the recent years, many times it has been established considerable paradoxes: surplus in farming production and growing prices; inadequate productivity and imports of farming products from Countries with very advantageous agronomic potentialities; abandonment of cultivable lands situated on hill and mountain areas and land grabbing in the poorest Countries; expansion of no food crops in the same regions where people are starving. In the nineties, whether capitalistic agriculture in western Countries or the collectivism one in Socialist Countries and in Developing Countries affi rmed the “rediscovery of territory and genius loci”. The new Common Agricultural Policy (“CAP”) will have to consider that in order to feed humankind will be necessary to dress Earth through a more respectful use of resources and natural environment and closer use to the traditional food crops of local communities. In this way, rural landscape, which tells stories of thousand-years old efforts and successes, becomes the paradigm more suitable to represent them and to protect quality of farming products and food.

Keywords: Food, Agriculture, Environment, Common Agricultural Policy, Rural landscape.

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