They spilled the white milk on the black asphalt of the streets of Sardinia, like an unheard scream in the buildings of Cagliari, Rome and Brussels. They have invaded the white and useless paper of the agricultural bureaucracy that has always besieged them with black ink, worse than the grasshoppers in the plain of Ottana and Sedilo. Each of their protests is a litany of comments, most of the times of mockery and condemnation, for an activity, the agro-pastoral one, that not a few keyboard detractors pass off as assisted and funded by state, European and regional contributions. Too bad that work in agriculture, even worse in pastoralism, is, despite the importance of agri-food production, characterized by a fact that should make everyone think not a little: the income of rural workers is almost 40% lower than the income non-agricultural.
The shepherd & nature
Yet, they, the men of agriculture and pastoralism are the vital pivot of a virtuous and fundamental chain of life: food. Not to mention that constant presence in the valleys and mountains, in the plains and hills, to guard the territory, to make the presence of man the most complete expression of nature, in the delicate and essential balance between the human being and the environment. In Sardinia, an indented and isolated land like few others, all this coincides with identity, specificity, exclusive characteristics of the food products that make the agro-pastoral landscape of the island a unique one, to be safeguarded and enhanced, precisely because of its extraordinary exclusivity. And, on the other hand, in the palaces of the bureaucracy, between the deaf and mute walls of the institutions, from those of the capital of Italy to that of Sardinia, one never ceases to marginalize the productive destinies of flocks and herds, from Barbagia to Campidano, from Logudoro alla Gallura, passing through the Baronia and Sulcis. The pastures, sometimes luxuriant, others bristling with Mediterranean scrub, treated like a pestilence, are depreciated as if producing milk and cheese, feed and food, in the land of Nuraghi were a sacrilege to be denied at any cost.
