Peasant manifesto for healthy food

We receive and gladly publish the review that Isa De Caria, former host of WWOOF Italy, currently working as coordinator in Piedmont, very active in the working group on GMOs of Changing the Field, wrote for the Italian edition of the book edited by Atelier Paysan.

Liberating the Earth from Machines, is the title of the book published by Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, written and edited by Atelier Paysan. The text takes the form of a true manifesto for peasant and food autonomy.

There are several experiences in the world of self-made farm tool workshops: the network Farmhack in the United States (2011) then in England (2015) and the Netherlands (2016). In France, self-construction workshops have been organized since 2011 with the ADABio autoconstruction association, from which the L’Atelier Paysan cooperative was born in 2014.

This book is a critical call to strengthen peasant autonomy and, at the same time, to fight against the agro-industrial complex. But, on the other hand, the book contains numerous analyses and discussions on the evolution of agriculture, the role of the peasants, about their history, and provides detailed descriptions of the technical work and intellectual positioning of the Atelier Paysan. The term “manifesto” does not do justice to the content. In fact, the book is at the same time an essay, a call to action, a indictment, a detailed analysis-supported by numerous references to academic works-and a policy proposal.

The cooperative is taking a series of steps to document and publicize local technologies: training courses; knowledge sharing through tutorials, several books, a website and a forum; production and distribution of openly licensed construction plans. Since its creation, its members have identified a thousand technologies, produced about 80 tutorials and trained about 1,700 people. Today the cooperative trains nearly 600 apprentices a year and employs about 30 people and would like to ‘swarm’ by spreading its expertise to the world.

The list of observations and criticisms elaborated by the Atelier Paysan is long: increase in the average farm size, decrease in the working agricultural population, excessive indebtedness of farmers, decrease in biodiversity, dependence on private actors, high waste production, devaluation and disappearance ofknowledge, environmental and health damage, soil degradation, increased use of pesticides, increasing and excessive use of machinery, poor nutrition, over-reliance on digital technology and robotics, and the race for low production costs. According to Atelier Paysan, we need to reconnect agricultural production and food.

Giannozzo Pucci was among the initiators of the anti-nuclear movement in Italy. He founded our country’s first poison-free farmers’ market, “La Fierucola.” He has been involved in peasant agriculture, water, urban planning, schools, electric transportation and leads the Libreria Editrice Fiorentina since 2004.