A contribution of Alessandro Bartola

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.