In a farming world that has “profoundly changed”, we need to “restore incentive to the people who have remained faithful to the land, without ignoring the factors of uncertainty and crisis that appeal to the enterprise and freedom of individuals and institutions”. This is the premise of the document “Fruit of the land and labour of man. Changing rural world and Church in Italy”, published by the Italian episcopate’s committee for social problems, labour, justice and peace on 18 April, thirty years after its document on “The Church and the Italian rural world”. Globalization, the enlargement of the European Union, cultural and technological innovation, the need for quality agriculture, the relation with ecology, and the transformation of farms: these says the document are “some of the phenomena” that have “profoundly altered” the relation between the land and man, and that represent both “challenges” and “opportunities”. An “important factor of change”, according to the Italian Church, is the enlargement of the European Union that “may raise concerns both about the expansion of agricultural costs determined by the accession of new countries and about the threat that could be posed at the commercial level to farms operating in the old member states, in terms of loss of competitiveness”. A paragraph of the new document of the Italian Church is dedicated to genetically modified organisms, toward which the bishops recommend “particular vigilance, especially in evaluating their possible effects on man and on the environment, from a biological, productive, economic and social point of view”. Another requirement that needs to be guaranteed is that of “food safety”, thanks to “proper controls” aimed at averting “grave risks for the health of many”.
