Osvaldo Veneziano - "The value of unity is given by the measure of its effectiveness."

Osvaldo Veneziano - Editorial: At the time of going by car, we received the news that the “Comunitaria” has been approved and has become State Law. The next significant appointment will be the drafting of the regional hunting calendars.

We fear a slightly more complicated summer than those experienced for the definition of the previous calendars. The causes are to be found in the method adopted by the policy and endorsed by some hunting associations in the negotiations that took place. Except wanting to be dishonest or naive to the point of stupidity, we all know that the Government, center-right in the first place, and the parliamentary groups have sought an agreement with environmentalists (certainly those who are believed to concretely influence public opinion) on the text that in the end of the route was voted by a very large majority in the House and, in the Senate, for final approval, voted by the PdL and the Northern League with the abstention of the opposition (and the dramas we have witnessed?).

The agreement that the majority and the government have sought has not matured in front of the citizens, and so, today, environmentalists have a large margin to say that they are not satisfied "for now" and therefore will fight in the Regions. Without demagogy we were aware that it was necessary to give answers to the infringement procedures and nationally discipline the "exemptions" for damage to agriculture. It could have been done differently as in previous parliamentary acts.

The method chosen for the hunters thus proved unsuccessful. Of what to do in order not to continue to be exploited, perhaps we will have to think seriously. Now that, with timing and species, also for the confirmation of the Directives as they were published in January in the gazette, the chapter seems closed; the honorable and the senators and the ministers in this legislature believe they have already given.

Do we need to continue to raise our voices to claim certain minority "contents" and leave mediation to politics? Is it necessary to continue to delegate the negotiations to some parliamentarians "self-styled friends" or should we have the ambition to deal with the political groups in their entirety as they did in France?

After years of disappointments, the second hypothesis seems stronger to us. As the facts have shown, even the demonstrations need to be "contextualized". We are no longer in the 50s and 60s. Today politics, as its scholars say, is above all a direct relationship with "the People".

Like it or not, there are polls, maybe some better than others, like those available to "Palazzo Chigi". Having underestimated the evolution of "society" led to the demonstration of 6 September 2006 against the "Pecoraro" SPA decree with the presence of the vast majority of hunting associations, parliamentarians of various belonging and the result achieved is that that decree indicted was substantially "Photocopied" then by the Minister Hon. Prestigiacomo.

The last demonstration in 2010, before the elections, produced the result of art. "43 notorious" which will become law.

We ask ourselves: is it a question of numbers in the square? We fear not. Is it a question of content and representation as well as forms of communication? The advertising of the “Beretta” in the big newspapers where country look dogs stand out and not hunting scenes and too many guns is emblematic and teaching. In the meantime, we have seen with which environmentalists the government and politics are actually dealing with; those who make an opinion and produce a proven consensus.

Perhaps addressing the issue of the relationship between man, animal, nature, environment, in 2010 needs careful assessments on the complexity of the matter: the articulations of thought in the field are many and different for each one and, it is difficult to find answers with the repropositions of Committees of National Liberation of ancient memory even if revised and corrected, or the parties of the hunters who took part in the appointments, including the last of the Community, have shown their inconsistency. Making a "weather" parallel, we can say: their temperature "not received".

If the terrain of cultural confrontation is that of rurality, the first qualitative leap we must make is that of representation: hunters are not the whole, but a part of hunting.

If it is true as it is true that we are still a minority, there are other numbers that comfort us and that until now we have ignored. The management and conservation of wildlife for hunting purposes affects at least 70% of the agro-forestry-pastoral territory: ATC, CA, wildlife farms, repopulation and capture areas. The contractual, cultural, political and social strength of the managing bodies is much more than that of the hunting associations which, even if rightly collaborate and unite in the Regions, in the Provinces, in the areas.

Building a federation of ATC, CA, AFV, is starting "from three". The management committees already involve farmers and hunters (60%) local authorities, environmentalists. The areas that operate correctly have a positive economy, they express "territories", which are one of the novelties of representation that politics is accused of neglecting. The hunting associations are afraid to take on this challenge. Because? Because they fear losing a power that in the meantime is diminishing by the hour while they look at their "navel" and do not understand that a discussion would also open in environmentalism, what matters and that should choose between management and fundamentalism, in the face of a proposal for a unitary discussion.

The Federations of ATCs, CAs, Wildlife Companies would certainly have important contents and claims, different from the current ones: new men who, instead of representing conquered or even “sold out” cards, would express communities linked to territories: works and not words. The president of the area that produces more environment and fauna, better hunting, should preside over the federation. This "social" hunt is the most expendable because it is a "social" culture and is transversal to the right and left. This does not mean a positive judgment on ATCs and CAs regardless; associations should renew their representatives when disqualified, overcoming unnecessary bureaucracies.

The presidents of ATC should pay the damages of unnecessary restocking, provide budgets, make known how many animals hunted against how many bought (we hope never again), document the investments for environmental restorations also aimed at the presence of migratory ancestors, have transparency on the damages . This would be the strength of the united hunt that shows the results and not the weakness of the competition of false promises, metastases of the path for a single association. Other than the French model of which, once the timing and species chapter is closed, only the costs would remain. I like to remember one of the last important national meetings of the FIdC in which the President Giacomo Rosini, speaking of hunting quality, launched the challenge of wildlife management with the aim of having better ATCs than the Parks in the production of environments and fauna. A message of realistic hope never picked up.

In the Corriere della Sera Sette of 22 April, Stefano Disegni asks "what will be the next New Deal?" Carlin Petrini has no doubts: “the farmers will be the main protagonists of the third industrial revolution, which will start from your villages, your farms, your countryside”. This is how Petrini and Slow Food addressed them during the Third Edition of “Terra Madre”, a world meeting between food communities, farmers, fishermen, artisan chefs. Petrini and Slow Food have managed to take the debate on agro-food out of the bourgeois salons, bringing it back into the heart of popular traditions. In order not to be eaten by food, we must also be guided by a solid humanistic vein, the one that teaches us to question ourselves about good and evil, not to delegate it to parties, markets, industry.

This last consideration is well suited to understanding the approach we will have to have to our problems in order not to remain in the past.

Osvaldo Venetian