The phenomenon of land concentration in Europe: the Italian case study of local agricultural systems analyzed through GECOAGRI LANDITALY survey methodology

Following the global economic crisis, there has been a real rush to purchase land in the EU, giving rise to the so-called phenomenon of land concentration, shown by the increase of large companies (over 100 hectares) and a disadvantage to the lower ones (10 hectares), thus compromising family-run farms and the entire agri-food chain. In addition to the academic world that is studying and monitoring this phenomenon, the same European Parliament has also taken action through studies and resolutions and has begun to deal with what we could call a real re-breeding of agricultural systems that concentrating land ownership in the hands of a few companies, often driven by economic and financial interests, compromises the sustainability of agricultural systems and its multi-functionality and harms the fundamental rights to access to land and property recognized by the European Charter of Rights and contemplated by the EU member states themselves. In response to this status quo it is desired through the Investigation Methodology (deposited SIAE No 2007005663) of the inter-university research group «GECOAGRI LANDITALY», already widely tested and applied, to record the new structural profiles of the Italian farmland. For this contribution we will use one of the characteristics of the «structural» method that is so defined because it investigates the farm through its constituent elements. The comparison through the graphical representation of some values allows us to look at the Italian agricultural reality that in some ways represents a unique study laboratory, almost paradigmatic, from whose company structures, emerge the problematic of the rural world and of the Food-Agriculture-Environment relationship