Peasants as a hobby

Italians peasants as a hobby

2010/01/20 - Sloweb

Italians farmers as a hobby, but capable to produce, as owners of land of one hectare on average, a lot of wine and olive oil to label it and give it to friends and family. With a growing number of people who decide to move to the countryside, they dedicate themselves to the typical activities of these rural areas, agriculture in particular.

That is what emerges from first report on Nomisma on the hobby farmers in Italy, based on 4 thousand interviews. The compages of amateur farmers is very varied: employees, self-employed, civil servants, workers, pensioners.

The peasants as a hobby are not interested to income which derives from the ground, are united by a passion to cultivate agricultural activity, in order to obtain products for family consumption (61.9%), but also to stay outdoors (61.0%) and to have a chance to save (24.9%).

This interest in agricultural activities by non-professionals is internationally recognized as a "growing trend"; at the Italian level, the researchers point out, it is a "well established" but never quantified fact, because it evades detection of censuses. Today it is then assuming particular significance, with the economic crisis, leading many to rediscover the goodness and convenience of the products of their gardens and orchards.

The most common crops are vegetables, fruits, grapes and olives. Very often (72%) they are accompanied by processes of transformation (jams and marmalades, preserves, wine, oil, honey, cheese) - obviously on a small scale - and in some cases by small breedings.

In a comparison between the agricultural censuses in 1990 and 2000, continues the analysis Nomisma, there was a decrease of 1.8 million hectares at the same time of a decrease of about 430 thousand farms. "It is unthinkable - the researchers say - that these millions of acres were all destined for building. The agricultural area, no longer detected by the Census Istat, has not disappeared: it has instead changed owner, going from one farmer to another person 'foreign' to the primary sector which moves according to the logic addressed in particular to environmental and landscape maintenance (69.8%) ".

Source:
Ansa

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Category: From the world

Published on Saturday, 06 February 2010 00:00

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