Maria Fonte

The American University of Rome · Master in Food Stydues

For scholars and activists alike, local food is linked to visions of a more equitable, ethical and sustainable agro-food system. Notwithstanding an apparent unity, local food is mobilized for very different aims including environmental sustainability, the revitalization of rural economies, the reconnection of consumers to agriculture and nature and...

Modernization of the economy and agriculture in Italy occurred in a rapid but also unique manner following World War II. As in other Mediterranean countries, agriculture was long considered a backward sector afflicted by delays in its development. Notwithstanding the persistence of wide regional differences, farms across the country were generally...

In Italy the Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (GAS) are groups of households that cooperate in purchasing food and other goods directly from producers on the basis of ethical and environmental criteria and considerations of solidarity. They present themselves as a movement with a shared critique of the dominant model of consumption, a movement whose aim...

Accostare due parole come ‘cibo’ e ‘brevetti’ dovrebbe essere impensabile, quasi un ossimoro. Com’è possibile brevettare, trasformando in proprietà esclusiva, ciò di cui ogni essere vivente ha bisogno per vivere? Eppure i curatori di questo volume hanno ritenuto importante inserire il tema dei brevetti in un numero monografico che tratta di cibo....

En este capítulo nos enfocamos explícitamente en las dimensiones políticas y transformadoras de los proyectos alimentarios locales y proponemos leer las iniciativas alimentarias locales como proyectos de “utopías reales”, cuyo objetivo central es transformar la economía alimentaria hacia la sostenibilidad ambiental, justicia social, democracia y so...

European Union (EU) policies have been evolving beyond the protection of consumers through food safety protocols to the promotion of healthy and sustainable diets. The European Commission's Farm to Fork Strategy-the most recent step in this evolution-addresses challenges facing European agriculture and proposes measures for creating a more resilien...

This Special Issue seeks to contribute to the debate around less resource-intensive sustainable diets demonstrating just how critical a social science perspective is in problematising and enriching the terms of that debate. There is general consensus that the global dietary transition towards westernized diets with high intakes of meat, refined fat...

Currently global agricultural production could feed the entire world population. However many challenges face the food economy nowadays: persistence of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, intensification of environmental problems, climate change and the critical erosion of biodiversity. The alarms coming from scientists and the epistemic communities...

In recent years, local food has become an arena of social change, an important element in the transition toward a more equitable, ethical and sustainable agro-food system, while, at the same time, being also crucial in protectionist and neo-ruralist ideologies that support bounded, defensive spatial strategies. These contradictions point to the lim...

Neste trabalho utiliza‑se o marco teórico de Seyfang (2009) para a avaliação da sustentabilidade do movimento dos GAS em Roma. Esse marco teórico considera essenciais cinco dimensões do consumo sustentável: localização, sustentabilidade ambiental (redução da pegada ecológica), construção da comunidade, ação coletiva e construção de novas infraestru...

Il Papavero is a small organic family farm in the nearby of Rome that sells its products directly to customers, mainly through the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS). It carries out also on-farm educational activities for children of the primary schools of Roma and other nearby towns. From the strong relationship with the GAS movement, a new innova...

This paper reports the experience of a family home that has expanded its vision by inserting an agricultural cooperative as a sideline to encourage the activity of the home. This new farm involve disadvantaged workers to enter the labor market and, in some cases, the volunteer work of the mothers hosted in the family home. Within a few years the fa...

This paper reports the experience of a group of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, who after crossing the Mediterranean and working as labourers in the citrus plantations of Calabria, arrived to Rome and thanks to the support of farmers and citizens belonging to the GAS (Solidarity Purchasing Groups) movement funded a Social Cooperative for the prod...

Agricoltura civica e filiera corta Nuove pratiche, forme d'impresa e relazioni tra produttori e consumatori N. 22 -LUGLIO 2014

La letteratura sul consumo critico e sulle reti alimentari civiche va diventando sempre più ampia. In quest'ambito va crescendo anche l'interesse per i Gruppi di acquisto solidale (Gas) come innovazione sociale con obiettivi di sostenibilità e democrazia alimentare (Belletti e Mancini, 2012; Brunori et al., 2012; Rossi e Brunori, 2011; Fonte, 2013a...

Nel dicembre 2011 è stato pubblicato su questa rivista un articolo che proponeva all'attenzione del lettore i primi risultati di una ricerca sui Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (Gas) nella città di Roma (Fonte et al., 2011). L'analisi si concentrava soprattutto sui cittadini-consumatori appartenenti alla rete dei Gas romani e sul loro approccio al cons...

A discussion of Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice, and Politics by David Goodman, E. Melanie DuPuis and Michael K. Goodman, 2011, Routledge, Abingdon, 308 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-67146-0 [hbk] £95.00.

1 soMMarIo: 1. Introduzione. — 2. L'industria biotecnologica: un mercato concentrato e contestato. — 3. OGM e modelli tecnici: la Repubblica della Soia. — 4. ogM e diritti di proprietà intellettuale. — 4.1. L'Ac-cordo sui trIPs. — 4.2. La Convenzione sulla Biodiversità e il Trattato Internazionale sulle risorse genetiche vegetali per l'agricoltura...

An introduction to the volume Naming Food After Places, t emerged out of the CORASON project. COARSON is an acronym for ‘a cognitive approach to rural sustainable development: the dynamic of expert and lay knowledge’. Funded through the EU Vi Framework research Programme and carried out in 12 european countries between 2004 and 2007, this research...

Nella recente dichiarazione di un gruppo di eminenti' economisti europei sulla riforma della politica agricola comune, a proposito dello sviluppo rurale, si legge: Un paese può voler incentivare una distribuzione della popolazione sul suo territorio più decentralizzata; si tratta però di una scelta nazionale piuttosto che di un bene pubblico europe...

Bringing together a range of case studies from Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece, this book compares and contrasts different models of food re-localization. The richness and complexity of the international case studies provide a broad understanding of the characteristics of the re-localization mo...

Bringing together a range of case studies from Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece, this book compares and contrasts different models of food re-localization. The richness and complexity of the international case studies provide a broad understanding of the characteristics of the re-localization mo...

Los estudios de caso que se presentan en este libro fueron llevados a cabo entre el año 2006 y el 2007 en siete países de América del Sur (Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Perú, Argentina y Brasil), tratan el problema de la valorización de la identidad cultural (IC) como una estrategia de superación de la pobreza en las áreas ru- rales. Estos est...

La conoscenza è considerata oggi la risorsa più importante nello sviluppo economico. La strategia di Lisbona (marzo 2000), elaborata dal Consiglio europeo, si pone l'obiettivo di trasformare l'Unione Europea nell'economia della conoscenza più dinamica e competitiva entro il 2010. Tuttavia, negli approfondimenti sulla società della conoscenza, si la...

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) took an objective view of the long-term challenges facing world agriculture and considered how these might be addressed by the development and appropriate use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST), learning from past experience...

This article examines the dynamics of knowledge in the valorisation of local food, drawing on the results from the CORASON project (A ‘cognitive approach to rural sustainable development the dynamics of expert and lay knowledge’). It is based on the analysis of several in-depth case studies on food relocalisation carried out in 10 European countrie...

En el contexto de la crisis de los modelos alimentarios en el siglo XXI, las producciones agroalimentarias están en un período de redescubrimiento. Las autoras analizan las principales estrategias que tienen los actores locales para perseguir la valorización de los recursos locales con identidad territorial; para luego ahondar en las políticas de d...

C’è stata un’infatuazione, un innamoramento che non era meno intenso per i problemi che in quegli anni travagliavano quest’area, cioè i sequestri. La riappropriazione del territorio è partita da noi, escursionisti della domenica, ma escursionisti lo siamo diventati dopo… dopo abbiamo scoperto che c’era la moda del trekking». L’Aspromonte è un’area...

The paper deals with the transformation of local agrofood systems, in the context of the turn to "the economy of qualities" and the rural development paradigm. We will discuss a case study from Italy, specifically an agreement between Slow Food and Coop Italia concerning the Ark of Taste's Presidia, aiming at the protection of typical products and...

Le biotecnologie agricole ripropongono in modo nuovo e radicale temi complessi legati all’analisi dei sistemi agroalimentari: la concentrazione industriale e le sue conseguenze sul futuro dell’agricoltura e della biodiversità; l’internazionalizzazione e i rapporti tra Nord e Sud del mondo; la regolamentazione e il ruolo dello stato nella costruzion...

In the first section, I will present the relevant definitions and propose a short synthesis of the evolution of food systems in industrial society. Then the main features of the agro-industrial food system are presented, with particular reference to the work of Malassis and his school. The following section will deal with the most recent 'satiety'...

The following analysis seeks to focus on the movements and changes in food consumption as a result of forces whose particularity is to operate within different time periods. In fact, while market variables operate in relation to a globalisation project - understood, in our case, as the project of homogenisation and standardisation of diets - many m...

Because of their being science-based and because they have sparked off an extended debate on how technologies are conceived and developed, biotechnologies represent a particularly useful point of departure for a more general discussion about the evolution of agricultural techniques, as regards the origin and the distinguishing characteristics of di...

Diffusion du document : INRA Station d'Economie et Sociologie rurales ENSA 9 place Viala 34060 MONTPELLIER CEDEX (FRA)

Les impasses technico-économiques liées à l'industrialisation des techniques agro-alimentaires, en particulier dans les pays développés, ont fait penser qu'une nouvelle révolution scientifique et technique fondée sur l'élargissement des connaissances en biologie était inéluctable. L'objectif de cette communication est d'abord de montrer le caractèr...

Agricultural policies and agro-industry structures: an approach from chilean input-output shemes Abstract The determination of certain agro-export world power nations to free international agro-feeding exchanges with the purpose to accelerate economic growth and optimize the employment of productive factors, is opposed to the protection and normati...

Cet article, résultat d'un travail réalisé pendant le séminaire de Rome "Biotechnologies agricoles : révolution ou évolution" (1992) a fourni la trame de celui qui est paru en français dans les Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurale n° 24-25 (cf. réf. 161 de la Biblio. 1992). Existent également une version italienne (Biotecnologie e agricoltura :...

Integrated development of re-orientation of the various procedures over a reduced number of production networks, is the real scope of the new world order related to agriculture. The purpose of this article is to propose, from analysis in the input-output tables, a methodology which grants an impact acknowledgement of external exchanges over interna...

Le recours aux biotechnologies participe d'abord de la modification progressive de "la base commune de savoirs" mobilisée pour accroître la production agro-alimentaire. Leur développement actuel va ainsi de pair avec leur capacité à renforcer les savoirs et les techniques en vigueur. Mais leur véritable potentialité, celle qui conduit à une véritab...