The solution to feed us? restore dignity to the agricultural activities

The solution to feed us? restore dignity to the agricultural activities




The interview of the President of the Academy Professor Franco Scaramuzzi Georgofili held in Bari, January 25, 2012



The Georgofili Academy, based in Florence, founded June 4, 1753, aims to contribute to the advancement of science and its applications to agriculture in the broadest sense, environmental protection, agricultural land and development of the world Rural.

I was the Assembly of the Southeast Section of the Academy which was opened Georgofili President of the Section, Prof. Victor Acc Marzi who passed the word to the President Prof. Franco Scaramuzzi. Scaramuzzi The President said in no uncertain terms that the media do not deal with agriculture. But this fact, unfortunate for us who devote our lives to agriculture, has an explanation. How do you say? Can not give you an explanation, and especially to do with them can not even a reason? Well because the President will take away from this Scaramuzzi was unbearable when paid giving an explanation and proposing a solution. How do you say? What should you do? My friends get all this for you do not have to do is sit back and read the words below.



Why does not the media involved in agriculture

The answer to the question of why the media do not deal with the fact that agriculture is not the sources of information. Simply put the media say they have no news coming from agriculture. In short, in conclusion are the media not to deal with agriculture, but agriculture is not concerned with the media.

But how? I will say that you have written mountains of scientific publications and have participated in thousands of scientific conferences in which you are also very interesting and useful findings exposed that can make life more comfortable and full humanity. And I am sure that you tell the truth. But these publications are written for scientists, in a language totally unsuitable for communication outside of the scientific world, and conferences you attended there were lines of people that were at odds to enter the room. In those meetings, there were other scientists in the audience like you who write in the language of science to other scientists like you.

Here is the inability to communicate!

And then as the sources must be suitable to be used by the media? These are the news, easy news, nothing earth-shattering. News Dried and clear journalistic style.



The process of agriculture unit

The Georgofili celebrated the 150 th national unity but before 150 years ago there were many small states, and each had its own Academy of Agriculture. In Italy there are 13 academies that deal with agriculture, but to organize the action of these realities is the scientific Unas (National Union of Italian Academies of Sciences applied to the development of agriculture, food security and environmental protection ) founded in Florence in October 2000 which aims to stimulate and support the realization of joint programs, activities, respecting individual autonomy. And the Salento Lecce has the honor of seeing one of its most illustrious President dell'UNASA or Prof. Michele Stanca internationally renowned geneticist and member of the Council of the Academy of Georgofili.

Friday, October 20, 2000, forty-one of twenty-six Academies European countries (not just Western) Florence signed the Constitutive Act of the "Union of European Academies for Science applied to the development of Agriculture, food security and environmental protection" (UEAA ).



The process unit is an economic necessity and a social trend

The completion of Italian unification process is still ongoing as well as the European one, but the process unit is in fact a social trend and above all budgets. The process unit to be spread globally because only global summits can address and resolve issues that the European Union, which the U.S. can not solve alone. The FAO says to double food production because there will be more people to feed. But the cultivated area can not be extended further because the environment would be affected to the point of being questioned.



The means of production

If we use more water, more fertilizers and pesticides to produce more food than we will have the effect of modifying the environment, the latter we purchase that can not be modified beyond certain limits, which are synthesized in the concepts of sustainability and resilience.



Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is development that ensures the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations are able to meet their own



Resilience

Resilience is a term derived from the materials science and indicates that some materials have the property to maintain its structure or to regain its original shape after being subjected to crushing or deformation. Refers to a particular landscape right connotes his ability to cope with stressful or traumatic events and regroup before returning to the shape to environmental stresses before stress.

It is quite clear that the stress to which we subject the natural and rural landscape by increasing the means of production are such as to make it sustainable use putting a strain on the resilience of these environments.



The solution might be to do the reverse of what we do with 28 thousand years

In fact, instead of adapting the environment to plants as they did for the first Natufian near the lake of Galilee 28 thousand years ago we could modify plants with scientific knowledge that we have developed since then. In short it comes to using molecular genetics to change the behavior of plants.

To achieve this it is necessary that the planet is moving with a shared global governance.



Microorganisms green

The synthesis of proteins and carbohydrates may be obtained by micro-organisms that produce green food. What's more, that is, the science fiction becomes science. This is thought to real Farms but not on planet earth but in space.



The Space Farms

It agriculture in Space, we all know that gravity is different from that of the Earth. Mars has 1 / 3 of Earth's gravity on Earth or a woman who weighs 90 pounds on Mars weighs 30 pounds and 15 pounds on the moon because they gravity is one sixth that of Earth. In plants, the movement of heat, water, carbon dioxide and oxygen is strongly influenced by gravity. In other words, farmers will have some practical space suitable for microgravity.



The folly of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

And while we imagine that we go to other planets to find land to cultivate the European Union doing? In a global market for decades poisoned by speculation first requires the set-aside or a form of rest of the agricultural land linked to financial incentives, then the most sensational of the tricks in respect of a billion human beings who still die of hunger or decoupling (decoupling) of aid, ie a single farm payment to replace most of the premia under different Common Market Organisations (CMOs). The most glaring and paradoxical is that the producer receives the support that is independent from production.



Human persons need to eat and breathe

People have human needs of nutrients and to breathe so you need to make the first products to produce food and to get there to breathe does not need to pollute the environment.

When did the Government Monti has said that Sparrow was also given to agriculture and agro-industry. Corrado Passera (Como, December 30, 1954) is an Italian banker and manager that is from November 16, 2011 Minister of Economic Development and Infrastructure and Transport Government of the Mountains. It is because the development of agriculture is economic development. It 'just that the goods are moved freely on the planet, it is right that there is freedom to import. But I wonder and I ask you: is it right that in Italy there are 1 million hectares left fallow? It 'not fair that you sow one million hectares of good agricultural land? We import many raw materials such as Cuneo, that is the province of the great red wines, is also the one who imports more wine from abroad. Modena, the home of hams, has the record of arrivals of foreign hams. Approximately one third (33 percent) of total production of food products sold in Italy and exported for a value of 51 billion euros of turnover is derived from imported raw materials, processed and sold under the brand Made in Italy. This is because the law allows.



The sensational case of Bari

Approximately one million tons of wheat (56.5% of total) were directed solely to the province of Bari is also significant figure for the province of Foggia, Parma, Ravenna and Chieti (118,247 and imports between 158,075 tons in 2010 ). Bari confirms its supremacy over other Italian provinces also as regards the economic equivalent of imports of durum wheat, which in 2010 was 209.7 million euros (54.1% of total).



The origin of agricultural products

If the raw material is Italian or if the product is of foreign origin we obtain after transformation by the Italian agro-food industries will be the same? Yet we should all take for example the wine that is strongly linked to the territory.



Brazil, India, China

BRIC stands for Brazil, India, China to produce costs in the current situation is absolutely lower than the Italian ones and sell raw materials to Italy by the food industries are transformed as flour paste. But going on at this rate the BRIC (Brazil, India, China) will also transformed. The final value of the product is all that is transformed into the value is in the dough and flour. There is a need for redistribution of this value comes to agriculture.



They want to buy the Italian processing industry

The international financial system wants to buy the Italian processing industry that just is not connected to the Italian agricultural production or the flour that uses the pulp is not Italian.



The consumer wants to know what territory the dough comes

It takes a brand to give certainty to the area from which a product. The consumer wants it, this is what informs the consumer in a food product. In the past it was all happening with the farm land where the consumer had a direct contact. Today the activity of transformation is disconnected from the production. The consumer today has different relationships with the supply chain.



We must enhance the quality of the product purchased in the territory

We must enhance the quality of the product that you buy in the area but the farmers are divided and appear defenseless in the mass retail market and the global market. Yet there are solutions but who can put an L-shaped love?



Food self-sufficiency

There is a need to focus interventions on primary production. We impoverish food primary and hence the need to achieve food self-sufficiency of the European continent.



The role of technology

The traditional Agricultural Engineering sector is evolving for several years at international level, towards the broader Biosystems Engineering. The Agricultural Engineering applies engineering to agricultural science, and the Biosystems Engineering extends the applications of biological and environmental sciences, sustainable development of agriculture, food, land use and of ' environment, thus including innovative fields such as bio-materials, renewable energy, waste management, traceability, quality and food safety, etc..



The new things that are organizing around the globe

It 'true that there are corporations, but increasingly they are saying the company networks between distant countries. We assist the relocation of businesses, including agriculture.



Building a brand for our products

A brand is a trademark or a name which is associated with a history of events or activities. The brand of food products is characterized by a robust physical but also the most important thing is that it should be borne in mind is that the brand has a history.

Building a brand, in fact, means to build a story around a name. A story that must have a storyboard (a screenplay), players, spectators and the known facts. This is achieved through the labels, trademarks, traceability. You should ensure that you develop rings of interactions between nations and companies.



Combining the knowledge to do with the

The world has changed is fluid there is no longer the same conception of space and time that existed before the arrival of the Internet. Today there are digital networks, networks. The world is developing agriculture without farmers, as in Australia or the U.S. but we have to get into networks. Must be multidisciplinary network of researchers on the topics that are compared in order to integrate the world with other agronomic worlds.



In Florence, to eliminate the injustice of the firm at its own expense, preserve the landscape

Very soon three lawyers in Florence or a constitutionalist, an expert in agricultural law and public law in a meeting to discuss possible amendments to the laws which provide for the impossibility olive explant thus preventing the felling trees without delii there is no compensation for the owner of the tree. In short it is the claim of law to preserve the rural landscape at the expense of the single economic enterprise.



Absolute necessity for the future

The interesting interview of Professor Franco Scaramuzzi ended with the synthesis of the following summary: "We must be ready when we find that there is no other way to feed us if restoring dignity to farming activities."





Antonio Bruno



Franco Scaramuzzi



Franco Scaramuzzi, born in Ferrara, December 26, 1926, is Professor Emeritus and a gold medal at the University of Florence.

He graduated in Agricultural Science in 1948 with highest honors. Thanks to a scholarship has been started its activities at the University of Florence. In 1954 he obtained a teaching qualification in Arboreal Crops. In 1959 he won the competition for the eponymous professorship at the University of Pisa. In 1969 he was called to fill the post which had been his teacher (A. Morettini) University of Florence. In 1971 he set up in Florence, the CNR Centre for Studies on Propagation of Woody Species, which he directed until 1979.

His scientific work was devoted mainly to genetic improvement and propagation of woody fruit species, with particular attention to topics of study of applied biology. He has published over 200 papers and has participated as a speaker at numerous scientific congresses in Italy and abroad.

He visited and made numerous trips to study at institutions and research centers in all European countries and in America (Canada, U.S., Latin America), Australia, in many countries of Africa (North, Central and South) and Asia (Middle East, India, Indochina, Japan, China).

The President of the Republic in 1983 awarded him a gold medal as a "Meritorious for Culture and the School" and in 1998 he was awarded the highest honor the Order of Merit ("Knight Grand Cross") of the Italian Republic.

Member of numerous Italian and foreign academies, including the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union (and now Russia), was General Chairman and now Honorary President of the Italian Horticultural Society, as well as the Italian Academy of Vine and Wine. He was President of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences which is now "Honorary Member". is also an honorary member of several academies, Italian and foreign. The University of Bucharest, he was awarded the honorary degree. He has directed for many years, "dell'Ortoflorofrutticoltura Italian Magazine" (now "Advances in Horticultural Science") which is now managing director.

In 1972 he was elected representative of the Professors in the National Research Council where, for four years, has chaired the National Committee for Agricultural Sciences, and was a member of the Presidential Council and the Administrative Board of the organization.

He was elected to two terms, from 1979 to 1986, representative of all the Professors of the Faculty of Agriculture in the Italian Committee of National University.

In November 1979 he was elected Rector of the University of Florence and re-elected three more times (1982, 1985 and 1988), maintaining this position for 12 consecutive years.

He is President of the Academy of Georgofili since 1986 and the Society of St. John the Baptist since 2001.