A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS, Sicilia Libertaria #461 - ABC - AGROECOLOGY (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The first Mediterranean Agroecology Congress took place in Agrigento 
from June 9th to 12th. Organized by the Sicilian Agroecology 
Coordination Committee, AIDA (Italian Agroecology Association), and AIAF 
(Italian Agroforestry Association), it was attended by producers, 
cooperatives, and researchers from all Mediterranean countries. It was a 
valuable opportunity for networking and learning. The Sicilian 
Coordination Committee offered to host the meeting at the end of the 
long process leading to the approval of the first regional law on 
agroecology at European level. The legislation specifically defines the 
principles and criteria for recognizing local farms that adopt 
agroecological practices, and encourages crop diversification and 
polycultures, the conservation and phytoremediation of production water, 
the protection of native tree and livestock species and wild flora for 
beekeeping, the establishment of purchasing groups, the use of renewable 
energy, and agroecology training for sector operators. The law should 
therefore guide public institutions in land management and future 
funding planning, particularly by rewarding companies that commit to the 
agroecological transition. This reward mechanism can be a strong 
incentive for all sector operators to explore new techniques, but it 
remains delicate because it risks resulting in empty, opportunistic 
bureaucracy or yet another tourist-oriented label that leaves everything 
essentially unchanged, without creating the necessary rebalancing 
between the production system and the ecosystem. As many speakers at the 
conference emphasized, crucial efforts will be made to train and promote 
ongoing, horizontal dialogue between farmers, and between farmers, 
researchers, and technicians-who have increasingly distanced themselves 
from the countryside over time-and to adopt new, uncompromising 
production systems.

A paradigm shift, in fact, cannot be understood and measured solely in a 
scientific sense. Agroecology concerns the relationship with the 
landscape that surrounds and sustains us. Seeds, people, plants, and 
animals are non-conflicting resources of a single environment, 
expressing their full potential through functional interconnection: 
cooperation, from microorganisms to great forests, is the basis of 
evolution and life on Earth. The emphasis of this combination must 
therefore be on ecology, of which agriculture is an expression. 
Agroecology encompasses biology, agronomy, physics, sociology, 
economics, and politics: but in a general sense, it is above all a love 
of observation and is guided by awe at natural complexity. It pushes us, 
and drives us, to distance ourselves from the anthropocentric vision, 
fostering an ecocentric awareness within each of us. It is a different 
way of inhabiting, of feeding ourselves and nurturing the places we 
inhabit, reconnecting us to the meaning of our work with the land and 
reweaving mutualistic networks with nature and other people. The 
agroecological movement takes responsibility for the imbalances created 
over millennia of land colonization, tree felling, and the exploitation 
and impoverishment of soil and rural communities, particularly over the 
last seventy years of monocultures and the agro-industry of the Green 
and Blue Revolutions. The process of converting agroecosystems will 
certainly be gradual, but a clear vision is needed: as producers, we 
know full well that continuing as we have been doing until now and as we 
have been taught in recent times is no longer even conceivable. The 
countryside needs to be repopulated with trees, insects, and fauna, as 
well as with voices, songs, and good, nutritious food with an identity 
and cultural roots. Food sovereignty is also taken away from us to the 
extent that we refuse to exercise it.

Self-education is needed, and we need to gain experience with awareness 
and courage: in this respect, the congress, in my opinion, highlighted a 
generational gap with respect to the desire to change some traditional 
approaches. Preconceptions and prejudices against regenerative and 
soil-friendly agriculture have at times seemed to me to still be quite 
persistent. Certainly, the potential of agroecological conversion in 
Sicily is little explored, beyond the slowness of the process and the 
necessary adjustments and adaptations. For our part, we can be 
retro-innovators and not give in to the contemporary extractivist 
approach, without limiting ourselves to simply restoring the traditional 
agricultural landscape, especially since the effects of climate change 
tell us that this may not be enough.

Beyond words and our own convictions, it is up to us to influence the 
evolution of the territories from below and to set an example with our 
work and our research, being in the field and disarming ourselves from 
the destructive and oppressive power to which much of the mechanical and 
chemical evolution has constrained agricultural production.

Deleuze wrote, "Desire is a landscape," which is composed and 
transformed through the evolution of encounters and relationships. With 
agroecology, permaculture, and social ecology, we say, inverting the 
factors, that "landscape is a desire." Our utopia, genuinely uncertain 
and fragile, is a multifaceted and layered landscape, in which 
agriculture and human relationships exist in symbiosis, constantly 
inspired by the mimesis of natural systems and oriented toward equity 
and social justice.

In this sense, the document collectively developed during the conference 
is significant. It was developed through two spontaneous assemblies, in 
response to the organizing committees' decision to admit two researchers 
from Israeli academia to the discussion. It was a space for critical 
reflection, probably the most attended of the three days of meetings, 
which sought to express a clear position of non-complicity with the 
genocidal choices of the Israeli government and all academic 
institutions collaborating in the destruction of the Palestinian people. 
In this space, "we did not ask ourselves whether agroecology should be 
political-but what politics it should bring with it." The document, in a 
remedial form, was adopted by consensus at the conference's closing 
conference and is now awaiting publication in the official proceedings.

Piero Consentino

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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