Covid-19. The sale of seeds and seedlings is an essential activity, on par with the food and beverage trade. Circular 20.3.20 of the Ministry of Health tries to correct the error contained in DPCM 8.3.20. But it is not enough. Social and self-consumption agriculture and beekeeping-as well as peasant agriculture-remain exposed to serious uncertainties that harm millions of people in Italy. Appeals to the government, the Italian Parliament and the Antitrust Authority.
Contain, not kill
DPCM 8.3.20 first implemented the coronavirus containment measures, which were then reinforced in the subsequent #RestiamoaCasa decree (DPCM 11.3.20). As well as affirming the Ministry of Health’s decalogue for preventing infection.
The indispensable human activities – therefore removed from order of suspension – were, however, defined, ça va sans dir, with hasty approximation. (1) To the point where tobacco stores, paint stores, and even online sales of any product are considered essential. (2) But not also farmers’ markets and horticultural/fruit and vegetable facilities, both of which were forced into demented closure. Neglecting an essential concept, food sovereignty. Which is also expressed through agricultural self-production, from the Neolithic onward.
To make a fruit you need the seed
It is precisely at this time of year that most crops should be planted or sown, to reap their benefits in a few months. Fruit trees, vines and olive trees should be pruned now. Citizens, however, reported to UNCEM (National Union of Municipal Communities Mountain Authorities) that ‘lawenforcement officers were manning agricultural stores, checking that only animal feed products were being purchased.’
March, moreover, is also the busiest month for nurserymen. Blocking their sales means undoing all the work and investment done during the winter months. Newly hatched plants must be planted within a few days or they die. And losing this month’s gain can lead exercises to permanent closure.
The same non-professional farming and nursery products , it should be noted, can be sold online instead. Unfair competition ex lege, with serious and unacceptable harm to neighborhood stores. Yet another tribute to Amazon, the colossal evader who now among other things endangers the lives of workers, exploited like hamsters without the proper masks. (4) In addition to selling pesticides and outlawed foods.
Ministry of Health Circular 20.3.20. The sale of seed is a necessary activity
Following reports from UNCEM and agricultural associations, the Ministry of Health issued a circular on 3/20/20 where it acknowledged the problematic situation and clarified that the sale of seeds at the agricultural level should be framed as a regulated but permitted activity.
‘The sale of food is indifferent, the ability to produce it is strategic and likewise indifferent. (…) If planting activities were blocked for months the damage to the food chain, and this is what this Directorate is interested in, would be dramatic with unpredictable repercussions for the country’ (Ministry of Health, circular 20.3.20. See note 5).
Agricultural self-production, the unsolved problems
The unresolved problems for self-farming concern first of all the very many cases in which gardens are not in the immediate vicinity of those who cultivate them. This is a widespread phenomenon, stemming from the unbridled urbanization and overbuilding that has plagued Italy since the 1960s and continued until a few weeks ago when construction sites were halted due to the coronavirus emergency.
Many families and groups of people use patches of land that often lie outside the narrow boundaries of Italy’s 7,904 municipalities (as of 19.2.20, source: Istat). In all these cases, the management of vegetable gardens and fruit trees is also imperative, on pain of thwarting months of effort and causing unacceptable food waste. But seedlings already buried die, new ones cannot be planted, and the necessary food is wasted.
Urban gardens andurban beekeeping are other problems that need to be solved as soon as possible. These engines of social innovation-essential to ensuring continuous supply of basic necessities-have been improperly shut down by many municipalities in Italy, including in application of varied and differing regional prescriptions.
Risk assessment and the principle of equality
Political and administrative authorities on the various territorial levels (state, regions and autonomous provinces, municipalities) must acknowledge that the risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is identical:
– in self-consumption and social farming and beekeeping activities, compared with professional farming (regardless of farm size),
– at farmers’ markets, as well as in traditional retail establishments (or ‘stores’) and supermarkets of all sizes. In dutiful compliance with the Decalogue of the Ministry of Health, always due.
‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to member states in a society characterized by pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity, and equality between women and men’ (Treaty of the European Union, Article 2).
It is clear that the activities of production and distribution of agri-food commodities described above are subject to identical risks. Regardless of the business purpose also cooperative or mutual and solidarity or self-consumption. As well as regardless of the Ateco codes that formally distinguish various professional activities. And it is only on the basis of a separate risk assessment-absent altogether, in the aforementioned cases-that restrictive measures can be justified.
Appeal to the Italian government
The Italian government must immediately connect the ministries of Health, Agriculture and Interior. To clarify the possibility and conditions of access to farmland throughout Italy, within 30 km of homes, by those who manage it and who can contribute to management activities. By means of simple prescriptions:
– self-certification, which can also be prepared on a cell phone or handwritten (as an alternative to filling out forms that not everyone is able to print at home). With specification of reasons and routes, which as a matter of course must also include the delivery of agri-foodstuffs,
– interpersonal distances, to be respected always and in any case (without applying the unacceptable exceptions already provided for in Protocol 14.3.20, signed by the social partners under the diktat of Confindustria to guarantee the continuity of production in some cases not at all necessary, e.g., war industry),
– duty to wear a face mask, inside vehicles, where the only person each car driver can carry is from separate living household.
Farmers’ markets are to be reopened in every Region and Autonomous Province in Italy by emergency government decree. Recalling that their continued closure is causing serious livelihood problems for the families of small farmers who live-or rather, used to live-from these activities.
Peasant agriculture, the duty of the Italian Parliament
In turn, the Italian Parliament must proceed with the approval, as a matter of urgency, of the draft framework law for the preservation and enhancement of peasant agriculture. A draft legislation that the two chambers left to molder for 11 years.
The bill was re-submitted to the House of Representatives – in the current legislature, on 9.5.19 – by Hon. Sara Cunial. Its provisions fulfill the UN Declaration ‘for the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas,’ adopted by the UN General Assembly on 19.11.18.
Farmers’ markets and speculation, antitrust duties
The Antitrust Authority (Autorità Garante per la Concorrenza e il Mercato, AGCM) is expected to launch an investigation against all municipal governments that have closed urban and suburban farmers’ markets, instead allowing the sale of the same product categories in supermarkets. An inequality of treatment:
– completely unjustified, for the reasons stated in the upper section ‘Risk assessment and the principle of equality’,
– likely to alter, as it actually does alter, market and competitive conditions. With undue favor to the large-scale retail trade (GDO), on which users of farmers’ markets are forced to pour because of the closure of the latter,
– detrimental to consumers, who are thus deprived of the opportunity to purchase quality, often organic, food at affordable prices. Precisely because of the disintermediation of distribution channels that is achieved through direct sales, from producer to consumer.
#Let’sStayHomeButNotSilent, #Égalité!
Dario Dongo and Alessandra Mei
Notes
(1) Prime Minister’s Decree 8.3.20. Further implementing provisions of Decree-Law No. 23 February 2020, no. 6, on urgent measures on containment and management of the epidemiological emergency from COVID-19. (20A01522) (OJ General Series No. 59, 08-03-2020)
(2) V.
Annex to DPCM 11.3.20
(OJ General Series 11.3.20 No. 64)
(4) NB: The only masks suitable to protect the wearer from the risk of infection are N95 FFP2 and FFP3 respirators. V. https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/sicurezza/covid-19-e-mascherine-l-abc
About the employer’s responsibilities for workers’ health, see https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/sicurezza/covid-19-sicurezza-dei-lavoratori-e-responsabilità
Carla Luisi.
Coronavirus, workers stop Amazon’s Torrazza hub: “Lack of safety.”
The Press, 24.3.20,
(5)
Ministry of Health Circular 20.3.20
,
(6) The use of a face mask (even do-it-yourself, given the unavailability and speculation, as illegal as it is widespread, on the prices of N95 FFP2 and FFP3 respirators) is indeed essential in reducing the risk that an infected person, even if asymptomatic, may transmit Covid-19 virus to others. V. https://www.egalite.org/coronavirus-e-mascherine-quali-usare-e-come/
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Graduated in Law from the University of Bologna, she attended the Master in Food Law at the same University. You participate in the WIISE srl benefit team by dedicating yourself to European and international research and innovation projects.
