Introduction
Agriculture produces food and feeds through land use.This means that agricultural activities may produce wellbeing and richness but, if conducted in unsound ways, may bring about environmental depletion and pollution, health and safety risks for rural workers and harm to the general population through the commercialization of unsafe and unhealthy foods.
In this frame, a keyword for the sector is “Healthy workers, producing healthy foods, without endangering the living environment”. Reaching the objectives claimed in this keyword means conducting a holistic approach, able to involve all the actors which may play a role in this process, each of them is supposed to contribute with his/her brick at the creation of the building of prevention.
Among the objectives indicated to reach the goal, there are:
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Promoting universal coverage and access of disadvantaged populations to Primary Health Care and Occupational Health Care, to improve the health status of rural workers and dwellers and to reduce social inequalities;
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Improving the overall quality of rural enterprises, to produce adequate amounts of high quality food, taking into account nutritional, safety and hygienic issues;
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Reducing the environmental impact of agricultural activities all over in the world, through the diffusion of “green economy” principles;
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Reducing the burden of disease attributable to occupational and environmental risks at the workplace, environmental pollutants generated by agricultural activities, and an unhealthy diet.
This will see the participation of the main national and international associations and organizations involved in Rural Health: the International Association of Rural Medicine and Health (IARM), which has decided to organize during (ICRH) its own 18th World Congress, the Wonca party on Rural Practice, which will organize specific sessions and lectures, the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), and the European Rural and Isolated Practitioners Association (EURIPA).
Since 2008, every two years Ragusa hosts the Congress “Safety, Health and Welfare in Agriculture” (SHWA). The congress is mainly target at agricultural engineering. ergonomists and technical staff, interested in the diverse themes of prevention. For a lucky chance, this year SHWA was planned in Ragusa, only one week before the Lodi Event. Having in mind the main needs of agriculture and rural health, after a very short exchange of opinions we decided to join the events and to organize them together in Lodi.
The main reason of this decision is to “contaminate” each other Medicine, Agricultural Engineering, Ergonomics and other topics and to improve the opportunities to cooperate in the future. We are sure that with this decision we have open a long lasting track to be run in next years, with occupational physicians, OHS experts, GPs, Agriculture Engineering and Ergonomists.
Hope you appreciate the efforts, and welcome in Lodi!
Claudio Colosio Eugenio Ariano Giampaolo Schillaci |
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Acknowledgements
The organizers wish to thanks the following Associations and Organization for the support provided, in different forms, to the two Congresses jointly held in Lodi:
AIFOSS, COMPAG Association; BASF Italia; Confagricoltura. Coldiretti, Dinamica, Dupont, INAIL, Local Health Unit of Lodi, UNACOMA. Special thanks to the Department of Di3A - Catania for the financial support and the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Production, Landscape, Agroenergy (University of Milan) for their willingness to host the Academy of Georgofili Congress.
The support freely provided have not in any case affected the scientific contents of the presentations and the International Conferences ’ programme. |
