‘
Xylella
, a democratic emergency. Illegitimacy and unconstitutionality of measures’. On 12.4.19 in the House of Representatives, the dangers inherent in the so-called ‘
emergency decree
‘, where it authorizes the application of drastic phytosanitary measures even on the
monumental olive trees
.
Voice to the
Apulian olive growers
And a lot of stench. A
petition
to prevent waivers from due environmental impact assessments.
Emergency decree, 5-star olive trees of discord
Sara Cunial (MP, former M5S) denounces in no uncertain terms what has happened in recent days in the House. the emergency decree provides for the possibility of implementing drastic phytosanitary measures, including the destruction of monumental plants, ‘in derogation of any existing provisions‘ (Article 8). A serious attack on an already battered land.
‘What is being cleared through customs
with Article 8 of the Emergency Decree is a method that undermines constitutional freedoms and rights and makes legal what in recent years has been called an agromafia crime by no less than two reports on Food Crimes compiled by the Agromafie Observatory.
In the Agriculture Committee
it was decided at the table that citizens’ right to health, private property, security and self-determination as well as the precautionary principle and popular sovereignty can be waived in the case of plant diseases.
Thus, under the pretext of Xylella management, a dangerous precedent is being set that will allow a tabula rasa of our agricultural heritage to be wiped out and that can be repeated throughout the country for necessity, economic and lobbying interests.
The time has come Of calling a spade a spade. This is mafia project, endorsed by a part of politics and various parties in the territory who are eager to get their hands on that wonderful land. A land that has already suffered much and with this Decree will suffer yet another and perhaps lethal disfigurement’ (Sara Cunial).
Lello Ciampolillo (M5S senator) had obtained a loan for use of a piece of land that housed an asymptomatic thousand-year-old olive tree subject to a felling order. He established a parliamentary residence there in an attempt to save the plant, which was nevertheless felled in the favor of darkness. ‘But it is useless to cut, because Xylella is everywhere,’ ‘ the senator explained. ‘It stands on over 300 species, either destroy it all or don’t eliminate it. The story that if you have a tree with infection, cutting it down and buying another one ‘certified as resistant’ is just a fairy tale. Resistance cannot be certified. The result is to enter a tree that completely changes the landscape, needs much more water, lasts very little and produces poor quality oil. Utter madness to focus on cuts instead of spending European funds to develop research and possible cures.‘
The 5 Star Movement
dissociated itself from its MP’s initiative, however, calling it ‘
a real disrespect to the parliamentary work currently underway in the House”
‘. And he subsequently expelled Sara Cunial from the Movement for ‘daring’ to conduct the press conference anyway, albeit in a personal capacity. Expulsion from M5S had already befallen-last December-another advocate of pesticide-free agriculture, Saverio De Bonis (president of the association Grano Salus). One plus one is two, actually four, as the ‘
Big 4
‘
who control the global seed and agrotoxin market. But where do the 5 (Stars) stand between ’emergency decree’ and ‘sludge decree‘?
Emergency decree, House debate 12.4.19
Laura Margottini
(journalist for Fatto Quotidiano) summarized the contradictions behind the Xylella case
. Scientific uncertainty, first of all, accompanied by bragging about results that do not exist. The doubts of science have been turned into certainties by those who should have handled them with proportionate measures and have instead exploited them to impose extreme measures. With eradication orders extended to the thousand-year-old olive trees on which not only a unique landscape heritage but also the lives and culture of the inhabitants are based.
Massimo Blonda (biologist, former scientific director of ARPA Puglia) denounces the most dangerous aspect of the emergency decree. The provision of amending the legislation requiring strategic environmental assessment of plans and programs on territories. An indispensable and unavoidable assessment that must precede-according to European rules applied in Italy since 2006-‘plans, programs and phytosanitary defense measures adopted by the National Plant Protection Service that give effect to emergency phytosanitary measures.’ (1)
The ’emergency decree,’ as conceived, allows for derogations from any environmental and landscape constraints, without even providing for a prior assessment of the impact of the planned measures. With the aggravation of denying public access to documents, consultation and citizen interaction with the public administration. The administered are thus totally excluded from decisions made at the table hundreds and thousands of miles away, even though they loom over their millennia-old lands and crops.
Antonio Onorati
(
Via campesina and Italian Rural Association
) recalled how the origin of the Xylella case dates back to the late 1990s. The concept of ’emergency’ is therefore completely misplaced. Instead, it is a pick used in conjunction with a-scientific assertions to justify unjustifiable policy decisions. Policymakers thus transfer the powers of territorial sovereignty from the local to the central level. All the way to Brussels, where decision-making processes are completely uncontrollable, in fact, by those directly involved. It shatters the rule of law, nullifying farmers’ rights to sovereignty over their lands.
‘
Intensification’
is the watchword, along the lines of the Spanish model. Some people are under the illusion that they can use emergency funds to finance a radical transformation of olive growing in Italy. But the hypothesis of applying the Hispanic canon of intensive agriculture failed at the outset, for two essential reasons:
– orography and characteristics of the territories, biodiversity and production traditions in olive Italy are completely incomparable to Spain,
– the fragmentation of plots and farms, however, cannot allow for economies of scale competitive with those in Spain.
A scenario consideration should be added . Although Spain is the world’s leading producer, its olive oils are devalued as ‘commodities‘ and their prices are particularly exposed to market fluctuations and speculation. Italian extra virgin olive oils, conversely, are still recognized for the values of individual cultivars associated with unique territories and microclimates.
Mauro Giordani (People of the Olive Trees, PhD) reiterated that the olive tree eradication project is not accidental. Instead, it responds to the precise goal of eliminating traditional olive groves to make way for various land use projects. Like the intensification of olive groves and who knows what else.
Resilient trees, here’s the evidence
Stefania Gallucci, the owner of an olive grove in Squinzano (Lecce) that suffered two culling orders in 2015, shared her experience ‘from below. ‘We were notified of two acts out of the blue. The first ordered 54 olive trees to be cut down. I immediately asked to see lab reports attesting to xylella in the fields, but they were not provided. The time we had was tight, they had to cut the trees right away or else we would incur unaffordable expenses for us. Within minutes we had to face this choice. It was October 7, 2015. I asked that they at least let me take the crop, but the answer was no.
On October 23, 2015, I was served with a second deed for 21 more trees. Fortunately, these trees were saved by a prosecutorial order. These trees are still marked with a red X and have been there and producing since 2015. It may be that they have some signs of distress, but if it was xylella they would have died. The first 54, because of the seizure were not taken to eradication, were cut only at the base of the trunk. And all 54 logs sprouted, the trees did not die!
The math doesn’t add up. The manner, the haste, the fact that I was not given certificates of analysis, the fact that the trees were identified by a military satellite that has margins of error. The identification of one tree over another is not guaranteed. We asked for the possibility of outsourcing the analysis to a private laboratory, but were prevented from doing so. Telling us that laboratories cannot do tests, otherwise they would face penalties. This aspect, too, does not seem democratic to me, the inability of the citizen to verify the conditions [placed behind the measure, ed.] Unfortunately, the press, what we have around us and see on a daily basis, is against us. We have at our side the Prosecutor’s Office, which conducts heroic work, and the University.
We understood that this is a trojan horse. Thanks to the emergency they go beyond all the environmentalist constraints that preserve monumental trees, something was needed to go against these regulations. La transparency is not there and therefore it is likely that something is being hidden, that they want to bring to Italy an agriculture that already in Spain has devastated entire families and areas, because it requires huge amounts of water that we do not have, they are trees that would go into production immediately while ours need time.
They live little, make a poor quality product, while ours makes a product that is considered a drug. They want to force us to use toxic products. They would like to completely alter and rape the identity of our landscape. If the Constitution says that private property is protected by the state because it has a social function, this social function should not be placed solely on the shoulders of citizens. It is clear that the land in this way is absolutely depreciated; we tried to sell it but were offered ridiculous prices. The fear is that we may return to a new generation of the latifundia, that step forward made with land reforms in the past could be overtaken by landlords who are multinational and need little labor. Going to completely alter the economic, cultural, environmental context of an entire region.’
The word from science
Patrizia Gentilini (Doctors for the Environment Association, ISDE) has already produced several scientific papers on the subject and expresses deep outrage at what is happening. It was believed to have hit rock bottom with the Martina Decree, which authorized the use of neonicotinoids already banned in Europe, without any valid scientific basis. Art. 8 of this decree goes to undermine the basic foundations of law, the Constitution, the right to health and information. On the basis of a false emergency, which has instead lasted for decades, it is intended to waive all these regulations.
Critical issues, masquerading as emergencies, are the perfect excuse to waive laws and pursue plans, such as monoculture, that are absolutely the opposite of what we need, which is a different and more respectful agriculture. We already have a spread of 100 thousand tons of pesticides on Italian agricultural soils, and we know that they are one of the causes of serious damage to human health.
Pesticides are persistent substances that we find in glaciers as well as in our bodies, right down to our spermatozoa. These substances cause altered genome expression, and diseases are transferred from one generation to the next. The latest studies show that the risk of autism increases by 40 percent on children born to women exposed during pregnancy to the most-used agrotoxics, such as glyphosate.
Cognitive impairment and IQ reductions are just some of the serious damage caused to our loved ones by poisons used in agriculture. It is time to stop and think, to address global warming we need to start with agriculture. Soil is the first store of organic carbon, and by killing its fertility we also kill our own.
Emergency decree, the petition
to protect the environment
ISDE (Physicians for the Environment) and Navdanya International have just launched a petition–which GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade) is joining, alongside the #NoPesticides group–to call for the amendment of Articles 6 and 8 of the ’emergency decree. We strongly oppose the dismantling of rules to protect the environment. One cannot justify the ecocide of centuries-old and millennia-old olive trees, let alone the derogation from environmental impact assessments that must always precede any invasive intervention on land.
We invite all our readers to sign the ‘letter to the parliamentarians of the Italian Republic’
and to give it wide distribution, at
https://forms.gle/AMaeCfhZT5htvFTT7
Land grabbing
to the South,
now #Enough!
Economic interests, agribusiness, mafia. Aulic lands already severely depreciated, small farmers forced to sell to new landowners to avoid eradication costs. Millennial environmental assets replaced by intensive cultivation. One does not need a vivid imagination to imagine the murkiest scenarios on the horizon in the Heel of Italy, also forced to undergo TAP.
The eradication of thousands of olive trees and the systemic use of pesticides are being imposed with clearly unsuitable European measures. ‘The European Union has been misled by what regional institutions have represented with improper data on the Xylella affair,’ Lecce chief prosecutor Cataldo Motta told newspapers. Three people are still under investigation for serious crimes ranging from culpable spread of a plant disease to destruction and defacement of natural beauty.
Intensive plantings of fast-growing olive trees will allow mechanization of harvesting and perhaps increase yields. But they will make us regret our oil, the food-medicinal of which we are still proud. They pose a serious danger, therefore, to agriculture and biodiversity. But the dangers go far beyond that.
It is a wicked choice like the one that, in the early 1930s, reduced Italy to importing olive oil due to poor domestic production. Fascism had in fact condemned the Mezzogiorno to produce wheat – for the exclusive benefit of the few agrarian landowners, proconsuls of the party. A regime imposition, which now as then would severely aggravate the gap between North and South.
This is not the first time southern Italy has had its wealth stolen in the name of depredatory economic interests. The “failure of Italy toward its South is evident: a solemn, undeniable, immense failure that should be a case of conscience for every honest Italian.” (Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish economist).
Francesca della Giovampaola
, (journalist, ‘Woods of Ogigia’) deals with sustainable agriculture
, always looking for alternatives to the use of chemicals and poisons. A documentary being made will show the various sides of this story, in the hope that the usual puppet masters may not replicate this pattern to cause more disasters elsewhere.
Dario Dongo and Giulia Torre
Cover photo by Alberto Mileti
Notes
(1) Cf. d.lgs. 152/06, Art. 6.4
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Graduated in law, master in European Food Law, she deals with agro-food, veterinary and agricultural legislation. She is a PhD in agrisystem.
