In the Italian context, and even more so with elections approaching, talking about politics inevitably tends to harden positions, create distance and divide people. Tired of superficial politics, of selfishness and individualism, Italians are showing — both through their behaviour and through the data — just how little trust they place in this kind of politics: a politics that forgets to listen and to serve the community it is supposed to represent.
So, while the group of abstainers is the only one that continues to grow during this complex and difficult election campaign, the pursuit of the Common Good risks becoming one of the many casualties of the progressive weakening of Italian democracy.
The same is true for the Italian agrifood sector which, despite its immense economic, human and landscape value and the many small and very small businesses that drive the entire peninsula, risks being crushed by rising costs, shortages of raw materials and labour, water scarcity and increasingly extreme temperatures.
Given the current overlap of so many challenges that politics is expected to address, it is no longer conceivable to think that there can be only ONE policy.
A political approach genuinely aimed at integral ecological regeneration needs territories and inland areas, emblematic elements of Italian identity. It needs to rebuild direct relationships with citizens and with the many rural, urban, hill and coastal communities. And it needs the European Union to ensure that regional policies are translated into national and local action while remaining consistent with Italy’s core values and principles.
Not one policy, but a policy mix: economic, fiscal, environmental, agrifood and cultural policies capable of serving the common interest through multidimensional goals. This requires new analytical tools, new strategies, new evaluation criteria to measure impact and, above all, a new mindset capable of restoring the ecosystemic thinking that we have largely forgotten over the past decades.
The Summer School “Policy mix for ecological transition in rural areas”, part of the Master’s program in Agricultural Economics and Policy that we hosted this summer at our Paideia Campus in Pollica, was created precisely to address this gap: to restore the primary sector as a resilient and multifunctional actor capable of meeting the needs of society as a whole — and therefore not just those of farmers and consumers — through the recovery of integrated, horizontal, multidisciplinary and intersectional policies.
The training program was made possible by the meeting and collaboration of different actors operating at different levels of the current institutional and academic landscape: the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF), the Department of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II, the Campania Region (Department of Agriculture), Sviluppo Campania, and the “Centro di Portici” Scientific Association, which brought professors, researchers and political representatives, both local and national, to the homeland of the Mediterranean Diet.
Among the experts who guided PhD students, young researchers and Public Administration officials through the program were Gianluca Brunori, Professor at the University of Pisa and member of the Standing Committee for Agricultural Research (SCAR); Teresa Del Giudice, Director of the Summer School and President of the Centro di Portici Scientific Association; Pasquale Di Rubbo, Policy Analyst at the European Commission; Adele Picone, Coordinator of the Second-Level Master’s Degree in Architecture and Design for Inland Areas and Small Towns at DIARC, University of Naples Federico II; Sonia Massari, Director of our Future Food Academy; Stefano Pisani, Mayor of Pollica; and Giuseppe Cilento, Mayor of San Mauro Cilento.
A remarkable mix of experience and expertise enabled participants to understand the importance of comprehensive and integrated policies within local communities in pursuing ecological transition — a transition that inevitably depends on cultural and digital transition as well.
The program also helped participants understand the new skills required in agriculture, examine the challenges facing rural areas through the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the European Farm to Fork Strategy, the Common Agricultural Policy, and Next Generation EU, and visit real examples of agricultural regeneration in the field, such as Cooperativa Nuovo Cilento and La Petrosa by Edmondo Soffritti.
