Alessandro Bartola
“Giuseppe
Orlando and the origins of the school of agricultural economy and
policy in Ancona”
Remark:
This text is a literary transcription, with some slight formal
adjustments, of the introduction of the INEA seminar, titled: The
period after CAP reform and referendum on MAF
(Italian Ministry of Agriculture): Which policies to choose for
agro-food in Italy?, held in Ancona on June 14, 1993, in the memory of
Giuseppe Orlando. The premature and sudden disappearance of Sandro
Bartola makes this text, being spontaneous, particularly interesting
for gathering characteristic elements even of his scientific idea and
for understanding how the meeting between Bartola and Orlando, two
scientists of different age and character, could have been especially
fruitful.
To
start with, i would like to say few words about the figure of Giuseppe
Orlando to whom we wanted to dedicate this seminar. In a certain way,
I was his first student here at the University of Ancona. I met him at
the end of my student career: in fact, economy and agriculture was my
last exam at the Faculty of Economy and Commerce. My collaboration
with him depended on, let me put it this way, the eventual outcome, of
this exam. I remember with pleasure that other researchers were
members of prof. Orlando’s coordination work group: among these were
Trillini, Ballardi, Marftufi and Montemurro. Cingolani, Turchetti,
Valenza and Sotte, who joined the group later on. At that time, it was
the first half of the 60s, the research on zone programming in
agriculture was on its full way. The youngest people present here will
not, maybe, even know what I am talking about, but the older ones,
above all those who reside in the region of Marche, will probably
remember it well. Well, in those research works, which marked the
formation of us as young researchers, there was a subdivision of
various regions as topic of the study (Marche, Tuscany, then,
afterwards, Sardinia and later on Abruzzo) based on a methodology
which was established by prof. Orlando himself. I would like to remind
you of that methodology because, according to me, it is, in a certain
way, interesting even now. The regions we were studying were
subdivided into zones that had their own type of economical, social
and structural unity. Areas, which were homogenous or were kept
homogenous according to agriculture resources equipment, were cut
again within each zone. A kind of optimisation was defined for each of
these zones, resources being available, and thus were individualized
long- term scenarios from which a series of projects of
transformation to be carried out in short average time was derived. In
brief, a theoretical structure from which it would be possible to
derive, through a series of elaborations, the result of an economical
calculus, a series of concrete effective lines of intervention of the
public worker (although they existed on the map without any working
reflexes) was being defined. The connective chain among these
projections which were carried out in the field of agriculture and
other productive sectors, was provided by occupational balances. In
practice, the agricultural evolution was supposed to make free a
certain quantity of labour forces and this quantity of labour force
was supposed to be engaged in the development of the secondary and
tertiary sector so that it could allow to zones and regions, too, an
intentionally balanced development Naturally, the methodology
was a bit more staggered. Now, actually, I synthesized it in a
more extreme way. Some of you, present here, have surely experienced
that period and probably remember that there was a heated debate about
that methodology. It went in two directions. In the first one there
was Orlando and his group, and in the other one those who did not
support neither the idea of the
proposed public intervention in agriculture, nor that of any other
public intervention in agriculture. The crucial moment was in the
meeting-disagreement between Orlando, on one side, and prof. Baldoni
and Cocco on the other. In the other direction the debate was a bit
more constructive. It happened when there was a confrontation about
methodologies being developed in Veneto by prof. Barbero. The
methodology of Barbero in fact was lightly alternative to that
elaborate here in Ancona, because its starting point was the
definition of development capacities in the secondary and tertiary
sector, to define later the possibilities which were to be realized
inside the productive agriculture sector in order not to determine
strong unbalances of development, and in particular of employment. In
that period, it is funny that we are always at the end of the 60s, in
our Department of Economy and Commerce, research works in other
direction were carried out under the guide of prof. Orlando. I
remember works on certain various agriculture markets, a huge study on
the development of agriculture in industrialized countries organized
by Social Savings research Council to which Giorgio Fuŕ was a
coordinator for Italy. At that time other studies appeared apart from
predisposed ones in the head office of an Institute which I remember
with pleasure: the ISSEM: Institute of Studies for Economical
Development of Marche, in which, practically, the group led by Orlando
had the task to make bases elaborations meant to construct elements
for economical development plans of Marche. The regions were not yet
constituted, so the work was really pioneering and preliminary. It
seems also important to me to remind you that, regarding programming
issue, in that period there was a disagreement which I do not know
whether to define as radical, but anyway a heated disagreement among
some whom I consider, even now, to be the most enlightened politicians
of our region. I remember with pleasure Ciaffi, for example, who was,
for sure, in favour of this type of statement, the same way Salmoni
was. On the contrary, other politicians were a little bit more afraid,
maybe even because of the idea of political conflict that was
happening in those years even at the national level; not rarely, this
type of elaborations, which had as the bottom line the fundamental
task to introduce economy calculus into public intervention in general
and thus in agriculture, too, was considered as a sort of introduction,
not to say “sovietization” of economy, but certainly something
which was very similar. In a situation of general difficulty, where
not only these elements were involved, but others, too, that taxation
according which an economy policy was suggested got lost very rapidly;
suggested economy policy was not only constituted by fiscal policy,
monetary or income tax, but also was supposed to be aware that
productive activities would be carried out on the territory and thus
was supposed to take into account territorial balances where the
integrated role of agricultural productive processes, industrial and
tertiary was crucial. Public intervention continued thus to be
characteristic for occasional, undifferentiated passive and assistant
interventions, which follow later, as we can well see these days,
would have degenerated in pure client functions. Well, I would like to
make a remark about the defeat of programming, the origin of many
contemporary ills of ours. In our region, nevertheless, the spur to
open up economy and agricultural policy to territory interventions
quickly ended. According to me, this was the most important dedication
of Orlando: he was a convinced supporter of the efficiency and
effectiveness of the public intervention both in economy, and,
specially, in agricultural sector. Many of the research works we did
at that time and which prof Orlando himself had continued later on in
the other centre, after he had left Ancona, testify his dedication,
which was even civil and political. It seems to me that in order to
face the powerful urge, which is even
now in progress and according to which only “private is good”, it
is worth talking again about research works that were done at that
time. They constitute, in my opinion, a proof of the possibility,
which, however (and I am still sure about this), the
economy calculation, in order to continue a major rationality in the
intervention of the public worker, can be introduced both in
agricultural sector and in wider economy area. I would also like to
point out some of many human images of prof Orlando, which I had the
possibility to understand and appreciate by working with him in those
first ten years of his academic activity here in Ancona. The following,
so it seems to me, were the features of his personality: transparency
in expressing his own opinions and emotions, his ability to
communicate, to communicate with everybody, above all with those he
had contacts with in the field of agriculture, and finally his great
intuition. I would like to quote some episodes in order to show you
how relevant were the elements I have just mentioned. Orlando did not
like formalities. Probably, those who have known him will remember it.
He sometimes had somewhat “rough” manners because he always liked
to say “bread to bread and wine to wine”, he would not hide
himself behind pretence. I think it is important to remind you of some
episodes when I was present during meetings we used to have frequently
at that time. I remember that we used to go around a bit all over the
Marche region to do analyses of agriculture territory. On those
occasions we very often had the opportunity to face farmers. At that
time most of them were share farmers, who, as we know, are very sharp
people. Orlando used to start a conversation with them very quickly. I
have always remembered the episode,
when Orlando, with extreme trust in Marginalism, tried to convince a
share cropper of the idea that the best time for the slaughter of
animals of Marche breed was between 16 and 18 months.
With a very simple argumentation, which was his habit, finding
words adequate to the persons he would be talking to, he tried to
convince them to the point that it was not convenient to them to
continue raising the animal for another three or four months. He used
to tell them that, actually, as it was proved in the studies which
were being done at the Department of Economy and Commerce, after 18
months the quantity of forage which was necessary for feeding was not
compensated by the increase of yields obtained from this forage. The
crop-farmer, I can remember it as if
it were now, who made it clear that he
had made the analyses himself, because he would not know by-products
but he surely knew how to count, replied to him, I can not remember
his exact words, something like this: -Professor, all right, but I
have the impression that I’m not the one who doesn’t understand
economy here, but the butcher. It is the butcher who should be told
these things. He wouldn’t take the bull unless it weighs 600-650k,
in other words 22-24 months old. So it would be necessary that he gets
told all this because I have understood it long time ago and it is not
necessary that someone comes to make it clear to me again-. Other
curious episodes I remember about Orlando, in order to define his
personality somehow, refer to the encounters with an important person
from Ancona, whom people from Ancona remember. This personality was
particular because he accumulated a whole series of professionalities:
he was called “Murtatela”, it was his nickname (Saviotti was his
actual surname). This person was a street vendor, he was also a very
good painter of “fishing”, those constructions on piles used for
fishing, very spread on the outskirts of Ancona. He would paint
beautiful ones. He was also a restaurateur, and every time we met this
Murtatela, the discussions with Orlando were really amusing because
first of all Orlando was full of advice on how he should have improved
the quality of his paintings, which, according to me, were already
very beautiful works of art for which there was little to advise. But
Orlando was that way. Then the discussion on the quality of Ancona
cuisine would start, and Orlando really thought that it was not the
best. He, who even considered himself to be a gourmet, thought that
the cuisine of the Marche region was not able to increase the value of
food because it used a series of ingredients which were absolutely of
no use. That is why he would always pick on that restaurateur who
would brought him grilles fish and all sorts of strange sauces that he
used to say:- What on Earth is it, you put too much crumbs , take it
all off because the taste of fish should be felt.- And the other one
would answer that it was anyway a characteristic of the cuisine of
Ancona. But Orlando was still convinced that we, Ancona people, were
not very good at cooking. Another way of understanding the character
of this scientist was by considering his approach towards medicines.
Who knew him will certainly understand what I am talking about. He was
a man of great vitality, great working
capabilities , and to follow him was really difficult, even for us who
were younger. Even in restaurants, he did not tolerate the lack of
tension regarding his work capacities, as it was the case with his
elaboration capabilities and, every time he would find himself in
difficulty, he used to find an element in order to be able to make
these performances.
He
lived on pills of different colours. He used to swallow incredible
quantities of them, but I always suspected most of them to have only a
placebo effect. But I think that some of them anyway had some effect
because once having taken them he would start again with incredible
rhythm, which was even more difficult to follow. Talking again about
his work, there is one thing I would especially like to indicate to
young collaborators. It is Orlando’s great capacity to interpret
phenomena he was studying and his strong intuition in respect to
phenomena he was investigating. During our research work, after the
collecting a few facts, necessary for verification of the hypothesis,
after a few elaborations, research on some indexes, some variation
rates, he would already have his analysis and his interpretation would
already be realized. Then we, young researchers, with the urge to
improve scientific rigor, would start with a series of procedures in
order to prove the hypothesis. But, finally, the conclusion would be
that what we discovered after those elaborations was a confirmation,
ninety percent of the times, that w what he had found in his first
indications by looking at initial data was actually the interpretation
to be given to that phenomenon. Curious results used to come out when
Orlando, who did not tolerate others to be attributed the merit for
methodology and elaboration, would try to do mathematical aspects of
the models. He need to carry out quantitative and
statistical-mathematical elaborations, and since he had his degree in
law, he would come to, very often, extravagant results, a little bit
strange and sometimes not completely correct, some of which can be
even found in his written works. All this does not anyway diminish
anything of his intuition. His capacity to interpret studied phenomena
was incredible and decisive. Well, this is the first of the two
fundamental teachings I would like to recall tonight. It is still
well-grounded even today in a situation where, especially
in agricultural-economy literature and in Europe above all, more
importance is given to methodology procedures and methods than to the
understanding and analysis of economy phenomena. Studies are becoming
so much complicated from the formal point of view and disregard the
reality that it becomes more and more difficult to use them to
interpret real facts. Here is the message we get from Orlando’s
teaching: what counts is not the method. The method has its own
relevance and the theory has its own. We cannot, of course, neglects
instrumentation, but it is useful only if we, researchers, use it to
interpret economy phenomena. We should not, we cannot limit all our
research work to setting up, continuing
elaboration, and improving methodology instruments making them always
more sophisticated. Our task does not finish here. Orlando’s second
message is the one I mentioned at the beginning. At the moment, we are
mostly engaged with helping the elaboration of foreign learned men to
extend the usage of methodologies related to health economy even in
the area of agriculture policy. All our energy, of us as researchers
in agriculture policy, tends to be concentrated on triangles of
consumer and producer’s income, which are either lost or earned
depending on the adopted policy. Thus, the judgment about the
efficiency of agriculture policy seems to be focused on the following
methodology: observe what has been happening these months after the
McSharry reform. The teaching of Orlando, on the other hand, was
focused on an accurate analysis of the definition of an agriculture
policy which is not satisfied by only giving an answer to a question:
liberation, yes or no?, but penetrates the problem a little deeper ,
dealing with problems of the development of agriculture. Those are the
problems that are related to land acquisition and thus to land balance.
Well,
this seems to me to be the second message that can be discovered from
the analysis that this researcher had made in those years he spent in
Ancona and which he continued to make in other centers. We, who still
work in Ancona, have been profoundly influenced by that idea. Although
we know that there would be no sense to repeat that type of analysis
based on the same methodology used at that time, since thirty years
have passed, we are actually still convinced that the outlining of
agriculture policy which was defined at that time is correct and is
still worth doing research works in order to continue that experience
from the past.
Nevertheless,
it is true that the two series of research works we have continued to
do, and which have always remained open to us since then, are in fact
firstly concerned with: programming (even though the term may seem to
be obsolete), up to the extent to give rationality to public
intervention in agriculture areas, and secondly, with successive
development, public expenditure, about which we have given a concrete
proof in our recent works.