Alex Giordano is professor of Economics and Management at the Giustino Fortunato University and professor of Social Innovation and Digital Transformation at the University of Naples. He is among the Italian pioneers of the internet. He is considered one of the leading Italian experts in social innovation. For years he has been working with Rural Hack to bring new technologies to the field of agriculture. He trains small agricultural businesses to adopt innovations to improve production and environmental impact. He is close to the world of farmers, but with a perspective linked to the development of their work with technology.
Alex Giordano, what did you think of the farmers’ protest?
“In my opinion this is an important protest. A visible, physical protest in some ways: a real choral cry of anger that highlights how unsustainable the food system is and how difficult it is to find new production and social models that are practicable by those who decide to cultivate the land and produce food”
They are right?
“They are right because the situation for many is unsustainable: in Europe the vast majority of agricultural companies are family-run (according to 2016 Eurostat data, 96.3%) and they are small companies, with an average size of 15 hectares (in 2016 only 16% of companies were larger). These small and medium-sized businesses are progressively closing their doors (over 5 million farms have closed in the last 15 years and today there are less than 10 million left) because being a farmer is no longer profitable”.
Many attribute responsibility to Europe. Is that so?
“Many are protesting against some choices that Europe has made in favor of the environment and which instead serve not only Europe but the whole world to progressively reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture, or rather, better, of a certain type of agriculture. So the protest, which highlights the economic unsustainability of the ecological transition (which Europe has courageously thematized and articulated as public policy), has its own meaning. However, we must go beyond the simple dichotomy between wrong and reason because here we are really talking about a system, that of food, which is paradigmatic. I mean that the food system is, in my opinion, the context that more than any other helps us understand the hole all of humanity has ended up in.”
So where does this protest come from?
“First of all, this is not a protest but I think it is useful to use the plural. Both because they are protests aimed at individual European countries and also at Europe, and because so many different demands are represented within this anger. The protest started in Germany when the government decided to cut subsidies for diesel, considered a polluting and environmentally dangerous product, given that historically agricultural fuel, used for tractors, is subsidized throughout Europe. In each country, however, there are different demands. In Italy the protests began when the government decided not to extend the Irpef exemption on dominion and agricultural land income for 2024″.
But then the protest spread everywhere. She arrived in Brussels, wearing a clear political meaning.
“The tractors parade under the buildings of Brussels against Europe’s strategies to contain the negative impacts of all production sectors and also, therefore, of agriculture. Farmers don’t like the European Green Deal and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). I want to say that the requests are different, and not from today, depending on many factors: the type of agriculture that is done, the type of company and markets that have been chosen; then it also depends on the size of the companies as well as their capacity for representation”.
The ‘enemy’, we seem to understand, is someone else.
“Basically the protest arises from the need not to see one’s earnings reduced and arises, it is said, from the need of the large lobbies not to apply the restrictive rules of the Green Deal which directly affect their economic interests. So the protests are from farmers but also from the agroindustry and various stakeholders who are riding the difficulties of a sector and, if we want to say it, the great crisis of a socio-economic model. But you really have to be careful because all those protesting seem to be asking for the same things when in reality this is a protest that contains many within it. But you really have to be careful because all those protesting seem to be asking for the same things when in reality this is a protest that contains many within it. Furthermore, there is the risk that general discontent will be exploited and manipulated to find solutions which, instead of promoting the ecological transition and the redistribution of the value produced, maintain the current situation”.
When did the situation become complicated/unsustainable for farmers?
“The main problem of farmers on their knees today is not cuts to subsidies or the Green Deal but the lack of income. I often bring up a figure that was published in an Ismea report a few years ago: in the calculation made by Ismea, out of 100 euros allocated by the consumer to the purchase of food and drink products, the net operating margin for the agricultural entrepreneur is lower than 2 euros while approximately 12.6 euros remain as net remuneration for companies operating in the trade, distribution and transport sectors. This helps us understand the great imbalance in the distribution of the consumer value of food products.”
Can you explain better?
“The condition of farmers is the litmus test of the socio-economic paradigm of our times: a few large and very strong subjects who impose mechanisms from which they are the first to find the economic return and a strong reduction in the redistribution of wealth. In the food supply chain, large-scale organized distribution drives the key logic of the system: lots of production, lots of distribution and the lowest possible consumer prices. Food becomes a commodity (other than Made in Italy) and the main need is to have large productions for the widest distribution. In other words: the primary sector is considered, to all intents and purposes, an industry and no longer a production sector linked to the culture of people and communities”.
How is the food supply chain organized today?
“In the food supply chain, large-scale organized distribution drives the key logic of the system: lots of production, lots of distribution and the lowest possible consumer prices. Food becomes a commodity (other than Made in Italy) and the main need is to have large productions for the widest distribution. In other words: the primary sector is considered, to all intents and purposes, an industry and no longer a production sector linked to the culture of people and communities. In the conventional value chain the product is no longer at the center but is crushed by intermediaries who absorb all the value intended for it. The Chinese have understood this perfectly, in fact they are making important investments to cultivate, transform and sell commodities such as peeled tomatoes (which the Chinese do not use in their cooking) and meat (there are enormous intensive farms that are thriving in the Chinese countryside with absurd conditions of the animals and workers). It is a well-known commercial strategy: China produces for the whole world what the world eats, to reach the markets at rock-bottom prices against which it is difficult to compete. First comes the price and then everything else (perhaps): quality, health, environmental impact, workers’ conditions, soil protection, etc.”
What impact does all this have on Italian farmers?
“Our small farmers are totally displaced by these mechanisms: they risk being left out of the markets even in territories that base their wealth on the primary sector with the paradox of abandoning the fields and the consequent new consumption of land often, incredible but true, for huge logistics warehouses”.
In his book “There is no transition without conflict” he tries to explain the importance of the ecological transition. Why does agriculture need it?
“Agriculture today drinks 70% of the world‘s water and we need 90% of the world‘s water resources for livestock, cultivation and processing. It is one of the main causes of pollution and warming of the Mediterranean without considering that approximately 33% of the world‘s soil is moderately or highly degraded, due to unsustainable management practices. But in reality all this concerns above all a certain model into which we have brought agriculture. So it’s not agriculture that needs an ecological transition, it’s us humans who must choose to change a production and consumption model that is now not sustainable.”
Is a new model possible?
“The way I see it, it’s not only possible but it’s necessary. The path is already written and it is the one that Europe has begun to propose.”
What role can technology play?
“New technologies can offer different opportunities in different parts of value chains, impacting not only primary production but the entire food supply chain. We remember, in fact, that even with regard to the consumer, digital technologies can help increase product knowledge to offer “increased” information, helping to choose the product not only on the basis of price but also on the basis of other characteristics such as, for example , environmental impact, healthiness, clean supply chain etc. To avoid, then, that those who buy food are crushed by images created by marketing which instill the idea of health, for example, with the so-called “free foods”: lactose-free rice or cholesterol-free salad”.
Can you give us some concrete examples?
“We think that technologies have great potential for the food system: to promote the stewardship of the soil, the protection of biodiversity, the reduction of inputs into the field, the production of healthy and wholesome food, guarantees for workers and dignity of people; as well as to experiment with data sharing platforms that allow us to derive shared wealth and positive impacts on the environment and social systems from this new oil. I am convinced that it is necessary to follow new paths which, as Edgar Morin says, are new “society projects” because they have to deal with a world in profound transformation. There are not many examples of alternative paths that radically question our sociocultural paradigm and it is clear why: you need ideas and then you need the conditions for their application. For this reason I find conflict inevitable but, on the other hand, I believe that institutions have an important task as platforms for meeting, discussing and co-producing new ideas and solutions. Just as I find the resources made available to accompany the changes precious: studying solutions, experimenting with them, correcting them and then spreading them. The problem is that we have little time and it seems to me that this topic is taken very very lightly.”