L’agricoltura civica delle comunità locali: i distretti agro-industriali degli USA e l’esperienza europea

Civic agriculture in the local communities: U.S. agro-industrial districts and European experience. The crisis of conventional agriculture has highlighted the opportunities and the challenges for developing a locally-based agriculture, leading to: a) re-locate part of locally based (in situ) agriculture in order to increase self-sufficiency, differentiate production through specialization in gardens for vegetables, small fruits (berries) and kitchen (eggs, poultry etc); b) avoid competition with conventional farming (mainly cereal production); c) reduce transportation costs that became prohibitive; and d) promote direct sale to local people (farmer markets). After examining the theoretical basis of the concepts of “local communities” and of “civic agriculture”, we attempt to identify the contradictions of both of them and to formulate a new concept of civic agriculture resulting from a synthesis of U.S. and European experiences about community gardening.