On March 31th and April 1st, a small delegation of FLARE and Libera took part in the second meeting of the Softagri project. Softagri is a project implemented in the framework of the Grundtvig programme for adult education.

The main topic of this project is to try to set a common evaluation grid for sustainable food. FLARE brought the topic of the social reuse of confiscated property in the discussion, as a new experience of sustainable food production.

The participants are mostly representatives of consortia of farmers from France, UK, the Netherlands, Hungary and Chile; consortia of food processing factories from Italy; consortia of consumers from France and UK. The main point of the discussion was to find different and common indicators to be used to define if a given product can be called “sustainable”, taking all the aspects of the chain food production into account.

The main indicators have to take care about several aspects, from the soil’s environmental condition to the farmers’ energetic policies, from the packaging to the transport, from the healthiness of the food to the social impact of the production. In this framework, the experience of Libera, especially the Libera Terra cooperatives and the work of FLARE for the extension of the law on social reuse of confiscated property, can be a real and concrete input in order to push the civil society linked to the food chain production to think deeply at the social importance of food production and to begin to use food production like an educational tool as well, for all the European civil society.

The starting point of the sustainable food process is the same as that of the social reuse of confiscated estate: it is to try and give all the resources, that the civil society can use to live a better life, back to every different area and territory.

The Softagri project will have a continuation in June in the Netherlands, with another meeting where everybody hopes that we can finalize a concrete and common proposal for a clear definition of sustainable food, in what concerns environment, economy, social development.