Comparative analysis of social and ecological aspects of the farms joining the local organization Paniere Flegreo. How the countryside cultivates values.

Abstract

Research objective: This study aims to explore and evaluate the soil quality in 9 farms joining the local organization Paniere Flegreo in Campi Flegrei (NA), Campania, Italy. At the same time, social relations between companies and other institutions, competitors or clients have been evaluated, aiming to find out if and how the social environment mirror in the ecological one. Research questions: Are the Soil Biological Quality Indexes efficient tools to analyse soil quality in cultivated Mediterranean areas? Does the Social Network Analysis enable to detect relational goods between farms and different actors? Does the sociological environment impact in any ways the ecological environment (and/or vice versa) of the farms joining the local organization Paniere Flegreo? This study tries to investigate “ecosystemly” the outputs produced by 9 nine farms joining the local organization called Paniere Flegreo in Campi Flegrei’s area, Campania, Italy. Indeed, as an ecosystem needs many inputs to be balanced, in order to work properly and assure the well-being of its components, this analysis tries to evaluate the multiple aspects needed to work in a natural environment respecting it, protecting it and profiting from it. Two main tracks have driven this multidisciplinary studio: the soil ecological analysis and the sociological analysis. Eventually, the results from these analyses will be compared. To evaluate the soil quality QBS-ar and QBS-c indicators have been used. These indicators relate the microarthropods sensitivity to land management practices with the soil quality. All the farms studied follow the integrated crop management according to the Regione Campania guidelines. The last farm to join the Paniere Flegreo group, which also adopted the integrated management for less than one year, is used as control. To analyse social nets a first phase of questionnaires administration and data gathering was performed. The obtained results suggest that the farms seem quite homogeneous about social indicators, meaning that Paniere Flegreo connects sufficiently these companies, without letting any of them truly excluded or isolated. On the other side, the QBSs calculated have shown averagely good scores for cultivated lands, confirming their validity as tools to evaluate Mediterranean and European ecological soil quality.