Next Stop: Development. The Continuous Interplay between Agriculture and Environment in a Mediterranean Peripheral Region

The issue of soil degradation in Italy, particularly in Southern regions, has been a long-standing concern. Scientific literature qualifies land degradation as a pathological “relationship between social organization and the 124bio-physical characteristics of the natural ecosystem,” affecting not only the natural environment, but also a complex network of socioeconomic actions. At the local level, soil degradation is closely tied to the ecological impacts of human societies, leading to negative consequences on natural ecosystems. Understanding the evolution of land systems requires the scrutiny of several categories and factors contributing to soil degradation processes. This analysis extends beyond ecological considerations to encompass the impact of socioeconomic organization on land. To comprehend the degree of feedbacks and conditioning in both ecological and socioeconomic terms, a multidisciplinary investigation methodology is proposed here. This approach involves examining historical, sociological, and political-economic data to identify functional and/or structural connections characterizing the processes of territorialization and their associated degradation. In this perspective, the primary research goal shifts from monitoring landscape transformations to evaluating the dynamics of conditioning. This contribution focuses on providing a territorial history, specifically identifying key processes and phenomena influencing soil quality in inland districts of Southern Italy.