The new farming style coming from the Italian remote countryside

1. The new farming style coming from the Italian remote countryside Giovanni Carrosio – University of Trieste

2. Theoretical framework According to Ritzer (2004), the study of global phenomena needs to be fully aware of the relationship between the topics of homogeneity/heterogeneity and global/local. Grobalization vs Glocalization

3. Grobalization: • Syncretism of the concepts of globalization and growth; • Imperial ambition of corporation, organizations, institutions, to impose themselves in various geographic areas; • The Marxian and the Weberian traditions undergird this perspective: for the Marxian tradition, corporations, organizations, …, need to support the efforts at enhancing profitability by increasing their cultural hegemony (the dominant way of thinking); the Weberian tradition emphasizes the increasing ubiquity of rationalized structures and their control over people. Rationalized structures have a tendency to replicate themselves (the beurocratic process). • Very close to Empire (Hardt, Negri, 2000), as a decentring and deterritorializing apparatus of rules that progressively incorporates the entire global space.

4. Glocalization: • Glocalization is a syncretism of the concepts of globalization and local; • There are three accepted meanings of glocalization: defensive glocalism (sectionalist reaction), expansive glocalism (capability to promote local specifities) and alternative glocalism (construction of local common spaces); • It is more in tune with postmodern social theory and its emphasis on • diversity, hybridation and autonomy. • Multitude (Hardt, Negri, 2004) is the subject that better represents the spirit • of glocalization: Multitude is an open network of people and alternative • organizations where all the differences can express and where people can • meet to build common spaces and new way of life.

5. Can the distinction between grobalization (Empire) and glocalization • (Multitude) be useful in order to understand the conflict between the • European order and the farmers and the grassroots are fighting against • the CAP ? • The European work method is very close to grobalization: • the strong support to long chains of production; • the allocation of funds with the quantity criterion; • the support to the industrial transformation process that necessarily moves the development from the country to the industrial areas Dependence of rural areas from the industrialized areas and standardization of agriculture

6. The work method of alternative farmers and grassroots is something • similar to glocalization: • the local food perspective (Fonte, 2006); • new system of agriculture and new practices of breeding; • the attention for social and environmental values; • new kind of certifications in opposition to official certifications; • the (re)connection with the territory; • the will to affect the global context with the local care Autonomy of rural areas and diversification of agriculture

7. Three exemplary cases The research area: It is located in the Northern Appennine strip, between the provinces of Genoa, Piacenza, Alessandria and Pavia. It is a remote impassable land, where industrialized agriculture has never become the prevalent method of production because of the morphological structure of the territory. This areais not much populated, because of the strong emigrations in the past; in the next years there are some cases of repopulation linked to agriculture.

8. Associated farmers to the Consortium for the Protection of the Quarantina Potato: The Consortium was founded in 1999 in order to revitalize and promote traditional local varieties of potatoes, but also varieties of other vegetables and animals for breeding. Associated farmers to the consortium are 24: all of them are small farmers who practice ‘local agriculture’. This means to cultivate prevalently local varieties and to maintain short chains of production to create a local market. Consortium products don’t have official certifications: this is a choice of the producers. The choice is determined by the insufficient amount of vegetables produced (just enough to supply the local demand) and because a strong ideological idea to maintain the product local also in the distribution. For these reasons producers practice self-certification, that it’s a kind of engagement relation between the producers and consumers. In this way it is easier to establish a relationship based on confidence and trust.

9. The organic farm holidays “La Sereta”: La Sereta is an organic family farm holidays managed by Roberto Pisani and his wife. They cultivate most of all local varieties of vegetables and use wild plants to cook for their guests. They practice direct selling of vegetables, cheese and marmalades and outside the farmhouse they prefer to sell to GAS (Italian acronimous for “solidarity group of purchase”). They come to an agreement with a Genoese GAS for something we can call “preventive expense”: in early spring the GAS orders a quantitative of vegetables for all the summer and they cultivate the vegetables garden to face up to the demand. For every product they show a transparent price: this means that they write on the wrapping paper the production costs and the profit margin. This is a kind of self-certification where the farmer shows the costs of every phase of production describing methods and ways of the processing. La Sereta takes part to Foro Contadino

10. The Agricultural Cooperative Valli Unite: Valli Unite is an organic agricultural cooperative with 15 members and a lot of activities and productions (B&B, farm holidays, didactic farm, cooperation,…). Their production of organic wine is a very interesting case. Ottavio Rube, the member of the cooperative who look after the wine production, takes part to “Critical Wine”, which is an alternative network of producers. Critical Wine is also the name of the yearly fair where producers discuss the problems of production and commercialization of organic or biodynamic wine, and the place where they meet consumers. The most important proposal of CW is to print on the label the “source price”, that it is the first price, before the increase of the commercial chain. It highlights how much the producer earns from the wine, and how much is the profit of the retailers. In the opinion of the movement of CW, the introduction of the source price could be an important step to encourage consumers to contact directly producers and to shorten commercial chains. Still, Valli Unite is not able to sell all the wine production face to face. For this reason they have chose the double certification: an official certification for the wine that travels and a self-certification for the short distance.

11. The ‘glocal farming style’ According to the studies of Van der Ploeg, we are in front of a particular farming style when there is a common cultural repertoire and a composite of normative and strategic ideas about how farming should be done. An important role is represented from the market context that obliges to take certain decisions. Small family farms and alternative farms, that are unable to compete against agribusiness in the free market economy, has to reconsider productions and marketing strategies. One option that has grown in importance is to disengage from national customers and to build links to retail outlets in the farm vicinity (Holt, 2005)

12. Marsden and Sonnino underline two aspects in what they call new ecological entrepreneurship: the retro-innovation and the recasting of bio-local reconnection. Retro-innovation combines elements of tradition (local varieties, techniques, …) with elements of the present: it is the case of local agriculture with the revitalization of traditional local varieties. Retro-innovation often implies the recasting of bio-local reconnections, as a strategy to market local and traditional products. An important instrument to create bio-local networks is the self-certification. This kind of certification is used only with the products sold face to face in the farmhouse or in the local market. The choice of self-certification was created in order to shorten food chains creating relationship of trust between producers and consumers, but also in order to fight standardization coming from the official certification and to maintain margins of autonomy in the management of the farm. Therefore, shortening the distance that food travels means not only reducing pollution and encouraging diversification of agriculture, but it is also shortening the social distance between producers and consumers with the revitalization of rural communities.

13. Briefly, the working method of the official certification is seen as something similar to grobalization and the self-certification is the instrument to get out and to build autonomous spaces. The Ritzer and Negri’s theoretical framework suggests to investigate this spurt of local networks of producers and consumers as the advancing Multitude, like the alive alternative growing up inside the Empire. Using Storpers terminology (1997) these farms are complex organizational puzzles living prevalently alternately to the conventional system. The capability to alternate different pieces of puzzle consent to be flexible in the strategies to create an alternative farming style and to compete with conventional farmers when their roads cross.

14. The elements, which are indicative of a particular and innovative farming style (that I call glocal farming style) are schematically listed below: - The organic method in the agricultural and breeding production; - The direct selling and the reduction of the production and commercial chains; - The transparency in the price; - The research and revitalization of traditional local varieties of vegetables and animals; - The multifunctional and the integration of the income with B&B and farm holidays; - The trust with GAS; - The criticism of the official certifications with the self-certification; - The participation to peasant solidarity networks, fair and alternative local markets for the promotion of the organic culture; - The constant relationship with consumers and the idea of co-production, that has two meanings: the reconnection with nature and the ambition that the consumer becomes part of the productive process through the direct relationship with the farmer.

15. Open questions: • Are glocal farmers really creating a local market? • Is really the direct selling face to face sustainable for the environment? • Who are the consumers and where they reside (local people or foreigners)?