L’insostenibile consumo di terreno agricolo[The unsustainable consumption of agricultural land]

Consumption of agricultural land through various forms of degradation, erosion, compaction, waterproofing, has an impact on the entire primary sector, with increasing costs. Thus, if the Italian surface is 30 million hectares, 17 is the total agricultural (SAT), but only 12 is actually productive. The SAU, which has been properly used for crops, has decreased by 20% over the past 30 years and its incidence contracted from 52.4% to 42.6%, but only part of the loss is due to urban expansion processes and consumption of soil. Thus, there is an inadequate loss indicator, not including weighing roads, irrigation systems, woods, uncultivated, major renaturalisation phenomena that affect the lost surface [Soriani, 2014]. SAU is best suited to a timely planning of quality, considering the specific agricultural space and productivity. Its contraction must be accompanied by several factors, in addition to the loss of the SAT, linked to the reforms of the common agricultural policy, the various forms of support to agricultural income, the dynamics of international competition, with the effect of abandoning crops. This is often the result of wild re-naturalization, within settlements dynamics that attest to the evolution of land use patterns, only contributing to the loss of lost biodiversity, fueling instead various forms of degradation and disaster in regaining the natural forces of space.