A campaign to encourage Italian municipalities to approve a resolution declaring their territories free from genetically modified crops.

GMO-Free Municipalities and Regions is the campaign launched by the Centro Internazionale Crocevia and the Associazione Rurale Italiana (ARI), with the support of Navdanya International, calling on local administrations to declare themselves free from GMOs, including those obtained through New Genomic Techniques.

From the associations’ websites, it is possible to download a draft resolution that, once adapted to the local context, can be brought to vote and approved. This initiative follows the persistent attempts by the European Union to deregulate next-generation GMOs, exempting them from current rules on traceability, labeling, and risk assessment.

This political agenda has been driven by the powerful industrial lobby, which, following the Europeanization of the American corporation Monsanto—acquired by the German company Bayer—has invested substantial resources to push for deregulation in Europe. According to the national coalition Italia Libera da Ogm, this political shift threatens biodiversity, small-scale farming, and farmers’ and citizens’ right to know and choose, while reinforcing multinational corporate control over seeds and the entire food system. For these reasons, the bottom-up initiative GMO-Free Municipalities and Regions directly appeals to citizens and local governments to defend food sovereignty and protect their territories.

Leading the way in this campaign is a small municipality in central Italy. The Municipality of Poppi, in the province of Arezzo, has become the first in Europe to unanimously approve a resolution declaring its territory GMO-free. Poppi recently organized an event, with the support of various organizations, including the Casentino biodistrict, featuring internationally renowned geneticist Salvatore Ceccarelli and researcher Stefania Grando.

But this is not the only initiative. Among the key voices in the fight against GMOs is the president of Navdanya International, Vandana Shiva. Her biographical film The Seeds of Vandana Shiva will soon be screened in Poppi and, on March 2, it was screened at the farmers’ market in Manziana (Province of Rome), organized by the association Articulturae. On this occasion, the book Why Stop New GMOs by Francesco Paniè and Stefano Mori, published by Terra Nuova Edizioni, was also presented.

The organizers of the Manziana farmers’ market have already proposed extending the GMO-Free label to networks of farmers’ markets nationwide. These are just some of the many initiatives spreading at the national and international levels to counteract a trend that benefits only agrochemical multinationals while further jeopardizing small-scale farming and putting agricultural biodiversity at serious risk.

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