CONCLUDING REMARKS: PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY AS A MEANS OF ENSURING THE CORRECT AND PROPER USE OF MOUNTAIN LANDS

It is, of course, true that there are very marked social and economic differences between one mountain area and another. Even so, mountain lands in general are regarded as a second choice when it comes to investment and economic development. Most people would place them in the category of "marginal areas" and the set aside approach began to be applied to Europe's highlands long before the appearance of the present EU incentives. Dwindling resident populations are diminishing their social and economic appeal. Their traditional farming, stockbreeding and forestry activities are on the wane, and attempts at industrialisation face, if you will forgive the expression, an uphill struggle. Tourism alone is perhaps their only area of economic growth. Here, however, the picture has many colours. This is particularly evident in Italy in general and in the Piedmont Region, which hosted the congress.

1. A small yet significant confirmation of this trend is offered by Piedmont's Lanzo Valley as illustrated by a number of specialists in Miscellanea di studi storici sulle Valli di lanzo. In memoria di Giovani Donna d'Oldenico, pp1–564, published in 1996 by the Società Storica delle Valli di Lanzo, Lanzo Torinese:
   1. The population of these valley has falle from a stable number of more than 20,000 since 1805 with a peak of 23,258 to 1901, to only 14,459 in the 1981 census (Reginato, op. cit.).
   2. The dominant crop int he 19th and the first half of the 20th century was potatoes with a maximum of 496 hectares producing an average of 9–10 tonnes per hectare in 1929. Today this has shrunk to a few plots sown for family use, despite production incentives and the trying out of new varieties supplied by the Mountain Community (organization for assistence and defense of mountain territories) since 1964 (Santacroce, op. cit). Alpine pasturage on the part of "alp"units composed of meadows, woodlands and rough grazing lands, together with animal shelters and pens, chalets and irrigation works, for the production of livestosk and dairy produce were well developed until the 1980s in Piemdont: 1053 "alps" in 214 municipalities belonging to 39 Mountain Communities, according to the figures presented by the Turin Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Handicrafts at the Mountains Congress arranged by the Turin Agricultural Academy in 1981, but has since declined. Silviculture is now confined to a small nursery specialising in conifers run by the Piedmont Region.

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software to read PDF files)