INVITATION TO THE CYCLE SEMINAR: YOUNG PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Organised by CNR-ISMed with SISAm (Italian Society of Environmental History):

Sustainable agriculture?
Environmental issues of rural development in late 20th century Italy

11 December 2023 at 10 a.m.

CNR-ISMed
Humanities Pole (6th floor)
Via Cardinale Guglielmo Sanfelice, 8
80134 Naples

Remote access on Teams

The seminar reconstructs the most problematic features of the industrialisation process of the Italian agricultural sector after World War II.

The great productive leap in the primary sector was supported by a massive and unprecedented use of chemical products (fertilisers and plant protection products), which posed entirely new environmental and health problems. The industrial and chemical conversion of agriculture has been unevenly spread across the country, mainly affecting lowland territories and contributing to the marginalisation of vast mountain-hilly areas. The coexistence of chemical agriculture and industrial plants on the plains has led to complicated inter-sectoral relations, problematic definitions in the allocation of raw materials and widespread polluting phenomena.

By reviewing the contamination of water resources, soil impoverishment, and the advancement of areas at risk of desertification, the paper will show the structural difficulty of public bodies in Italy in the 1950s-1980s in governing the environmental distortions deriving from industrial agriculture and in organising a capillary preventive health policy for the protection of workers in the rural working environment, restoring some relevant, and hitherto little investigated, pieces to the complex mosaic of the environmental history of Anthropocene Italy.

THE SPEAKER. Alessandro Agosta is a PhD student in Historical Sciences and Cultural Heritage at the University of Tuscia and an Associate at CNR-ISMed in Naples. He obtained his Master’s degree in Historical Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II with a thesis on Economic, Environmental and Territorial History. His current studies concern the environmental and health implications of the industrialisation of the Italian agricultural sector, territorial divides and the rebalancing policies adopted, mobility phenomena and labour market developments in the Mezzogiorno in the second half of the 20th century.

SPEAKER

Alessandro Agosta
CNR-ISMed
University of Tuscia

INTRODUCES AND MODERATES

Giovanni Ferrarese
CNR-ISMed and University of Salerno

FINAL DEBATE

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Alessandro Agosta, Valerio Caruso, Gabriella Corona, Giovanni Ferrarese, Walter Palmieri
CNR-ISMed

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC while places are available
REMOTE ACCESS on Teams

INFO AND CONTACTS
valerio.caruso@ismed.cnr.it
www.ismed.cnr.it
www.storiaambientale.it

In annex flyer and program 2023-2024