A book that calls for a fight for a different future

IN DEFENSE OF THE FARMERS, by Antonio Onorati. 2024, ed. AAM Terra Nuova, 246 p., €13.

“It is precisely the farmers who can save us from the overwhelming power of agribusiness, which wants to control the land and seeds, reducing food to a commodity.”

This very well-documented, comprehensive and up-to-date text tells us about Italian and European agricultural policies, their intertwining with industry and finance-through the futures that dictate agricultural prices, and more- , showing us how agribusiness is the target that agricultural policies of public decision makers promote.

With the support of numbers and documents, it shows us the value of peasant agriculture, which avoids dependence on industrial inputs and generates ecosystem services as well as products. We find many insights into the role of the functioning of the CAP, agricultural unions, ISMEA and various state bodies, the famous “Made in Italy” (produced with foreign raw materials), the “tractor protest,” betrayed and then taken over by the big unions, digitization and agri-voltaics, as well as the attempt to re-introduce GMOs through the deregulation of NGTs (called TEAs in Italy), which are touted as valuable support to farmers and agricultural enterprises.

“The earth is not the soil, it is the very life contained therein.”

“The ecological turn is a key node to innovate, not because we digitize, not because we use artificial intelligence, not because we use the tractor that drives itself, but because working with nature you are forced to renew, you have to look at the fields every day, every month, every year, look at the animals […..]”

Antonio Onorati has been fighting for the defense and visibility of peasant agriculture for decades. He is a member of theItalian Rural Association, the European Via Campesina Coordination and has been president of the International Crossroads Center.