Italian Historical Rural Landscapes: Dynamics, Data Analysis and Research Findings

Abstract

One of the first questions that the scientific committee needed to answer when proposing this research to the Italian Ministry of Agriculture Food and Forestry, was why we needed a national register of the rural landscapes, in these difficult times of economic and social crisis, that seems to pose more urgent matters in the political agenda. Several different answers could be given to this question, since several different reasons induced a large group of scholars working in different domains to undertake this work. Let me just point out a significant and fairly obvious one. After over half a century of an industrial agriculture which has deeply transformed our countryside, after decades of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which have placed our land and environment under extreme pressure, it has become urgent to draw a balance and provide a general assessment of what remains of one of the most diverse and aesthetically compelling landscapes in Europe and the world, and one of the richest in agricultural biodiversity. On the other hand, it is worth noting that since the end of the 1980s Common Agricultural Policy has started to limit and regulate the use of land and its agricultural transformations by means of milk quotas and set-aside plans—that is, putting the less productive land to rest. The same is being done today in viticulture, as well.