Italian Social Farming: the Network of Coldiretti and Campagna Amica

Roberta Moruzzo,Carmelo Troccoli,Francesco Di Iacovo,Angela Galasso,Salomon Espinosa Diaz,Francesco Riccioli

doi:10.3390/su12125036

Abstract

For the last ten years, Social farming (SF) has become an innovative practice able to connect multifunctional agriculture and novel social services for urban and rural areas in Italy and the EU. By looking at the experience from Italy, it is possible to note that SF has not developed homogeneously along the national territory. It is characterized by a wide range of practices and activities related to the development of a welfare in which several topics such as subsidiarity, the value of relationship, and co-production find multiple meanings and applications. This paper provides a further contribution to the knowledge on this type of activity and opens the way to deeper considerations on the topic. The information reported in this study refers to a project born in 2018 and carried out by Fondazione Campagna Amica, a foundation promoted by Coldiretti, the main organization of agricultural entrepreneurs in Italy. This paper focuses on the analysis of data collected during this project, through in-depth interviews carried out from July 2018 to March 2019 among 229 agricultural enterprises, as well as meetings with representatives of the regional offices of Coldiretti that are involved in SF. This study aims to reach a better understanding of the development of SF in Italy through the perspective of a national network of farmers and to compare SF practices across regions in order to examine their similarities and differences. The most important results show big individual farms with a great variety of agricultural activities and livestock systems, with a clear predominance of horticulture. These SF farms mainly provide direct sales and educational activities and are involved in training and job placement services.

Highlights

The development of social farming (SF) is connected to the emergence of visions that link the need for relationship-based and community approaches with aspects such as the multifunctionality of agriculture, the construction of new welfare hypotheses, and the adoption of innovative tools for the provision of services capable of responding effectively to people’s needs [1]
The information reported in this study refers to a project born in 2018 and carried out by Fondazione Campagna Amica, a foundation promoted by Coldiretti, the main organization of agricultural entrepreneurs in Italy
A more precise analysis would allow us to reflect on many aspects connected to the reformulation of innovative hypotheses on rural welfare, such as the understanding of the roles and interactions between institutional actors, the positioning and the cultural reference of the public and private actors involved and their way of interacting, the levels of collaboration/competition among individuals, the understanding of the roles necessary to innovate and the ability of the various stakeholders to cover them, and the ways of monitoring and evaluating the results of the paths undertaken

Summary

Introduction

The development of social farming (SF) is connected to the emergence of visions that link the need for relationship-based and community approaches with aspects such as the multifunctionality of agriculture, the construction of new welfare hypotheses, and the adoption of innovative tools for the provision of services capable of responding effectively to people’s needs [1]. In northern European countries, care farming practices (which include social farming practices) are an important element of welfare, recognized by public policies and paid to farmers accredited to the national health system as an activity of economic diversification. It is recognized by the national welfare as a diversification of services offered by people. In some southern countries (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) the state occupies a subsidiary position and it falls to the third social sector and other entities to promote social farming and establish support networks [6]

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