Veneto hydrogeological instability: everyone has their job!

In recent weeks we have witnessed repeated announcements, not without a certain triumphalist vein, about “enough land consumption” and “no to concreting” Veneto, advanced in recent decades in an obsessive and decidedly unsustainable way, and certainly an important cause of hydrogeological instability.

For the sake of brevity, we can leave out at least two obvious facts:

1. that the same people who did the damage are reversing the trend, from politics to the business and financial world of Veneto, is at least curious

2. that if there is, a slowdown in concreting, certainly not Zaia, Ruffato and/or Zanonato decide, but the market and the inevitable decline we are witnessing — how can we not see empty warehouses, vacant houses and less traffic?

But what surprises me most are the announcements of the so-called “agricultural world”, with Colretti in the lead, as if this slowdown in concreting were a victory for agriculture, and the alternative to failure were that mythical farmer “guardian of the territory”, the main actor in the protection of the landscape, the environment and traditions.

That type of figure often mystified and used for emotional and advertising purposes.

On closer inspection, on the other hand, what you see around are huge “road” agricultural tractors (editor's note., powered by subsidized agricultural diesel) that run here and there around Veneto and Ferrara to pull up wheat and corn destined for biogas plants; obviously crops whose management and whose “non-renewable” energy consumption are exactly the opposite of the incentives for “renewable” energy that are copiously supplied to them. And it's luxurious if only the crops go to the plants, it seems that in some cases something else goes there too, to read the newspapers on the chemical analysis of the sludge deriving from 'digestion'.

Once the trailers have been disconnected, it is then necessary to distribute the “digestate” somewhere in the ground, with tankers. Being the product of anaerobic digestion, it is inevitably loaded with pathogenic bacteria and viruses (editor's note, among others, certainly tetanus and botulinum). It seems that in Germany this is the path to follow to understand how the famous Escherichia Coli could make the dead that it did some time ago.

In short, a full-fledged industrial activity, which now has little to do with agriculture (to learn more click Digestato - Albios 48).

A significant effect is the difficulty for those who continue to be farmers to find areas to harvest hay, since the benefits of the electricity bill for biogas, combined with the contributions of the CAP (Community Agricultural Policy), in fact constitute an income for land owners, who do not make them so available on the rental market to “real” agricultural businesses.

Obviously, in the fields there is no place for any plant living being other than the monoculture that is practiced (the use of herbicides and desiccants, such as Glyfosate, has increased by 30% in a short time), nor for attention to grasses and trees along watercourses. All of this has serious effects on the ability of soils to hold rainwater.

It is known that in large local farms, the famous hedges, financed copiously with funds from the various RDPs (Regional Rural Development Plans, EU funds that come directly out of taxpayers' pockets), after 5-7 years of commitment, are destroyed and buried, waiting for the next funding.

Or are we talking about the Prosecco dei Colli Trevigiani district? Which are literally coming down, having put vineyards everywhere, without attention to the fragility of the environmental context, chasing an idea of a market in a very short space, as long as we become aware of the real environmental and health impact of conventional cultivation.

It is true that I am speaking from the position of those who for decades have been proposing and practicing, with flattering success I must say, the organic farming model, as local as possible.

I say as much as possible because our Veneto has a strange organic record: it is among the first two Italian regions in terms of turnover and consumption, but among the last two in terms of the incidence of organic agricultural production on the regional total.

It is no coincidence that the Veneto RDP mentioned above is among those in Italy that penalize those who practice organic agriculture the most.

It is enough to leave regional borders and immediately there would be other incentives and awards, and above all, less welfare and more recognition of the undoubtedly health, social, environmental and, in fact, hydrogeological benefits, of a more responsible approach to agriculture.

If you want to talk about business dignity, and this is what is needed in agriculture, I am among those who demand more facts and fewer announcements, thank you.

Franco Zecchinato — Italian Association for Agriculture of Veneto