Bereft of significant thrust, food production in Malta has been wrung short of impetus and motivation. But while my previous articles were studded with examples of flaws in structures and shortcomings in legislation, I beg to withdraw to an allegorical, quiet vantage point to reflect on the nuances and ideology of agriculture.

While it is useless to delve into historical or strategic discourse on the importance for a country to have apt food production chains to feed its people, it is astoundingly clear that, in the nation’s psyche, the farmer as the holder of traditional knowledge and the guardian of untold wisdom has been relegated to little more than an admirable rural worker – a scarce reminder of the recent history of our nation.

For which occupation – noble though it may be – can profess that it masters the unpredictability of the weather, the ancient character of the local landscape, the constant needs of the different plants and animals at their different life stages, the demands of the market, the labyrinths of business operations and the inherited skills of ancestors to produce a tomato, a cheese, a steak or a wine?

For the farmer is the true meeting point of everything that defines a nation or a region. Very few other things afford a sense of identity than its landscape, its climate, its floral and faunal bounty and the exploitation of the biodiversity of food that it has the ability to provide for its inhabitants.

The farmer is the true meeting point of everything that defines a nation or a region

And the farmer stands dead in the centre of this crossroads of a nation’s attributes and unique features, not to mention the contributions to other aspects of the territory like the rainbow of different rural village dialects and the resourcefulness and competence to build and maintain rural structures and architecture.

No other occupation can contribute so much to the identity of a nation.

All this can be dissed as nostalgia but go say that to a Chateau owner in France that relies on the exceptional exploitation of these territorial features to produce high quality wines – some costing tens of thousands of euros a bottle.

Territory is what you make of it and its exploitation is heavily dependent on a nation’s priority.

The worldwide sales value of products produced in the European Union and which are protected for their geographical indication – their territorial uniqueness – stood at €54.3 billion in 2010.

The bond with and the sustainable exploitation of a unique territory defines the character of a nation including its priorities, the respect for its past and the vision for the future.

But our weak understanding of this and the capricious nature of our lack of recognition of such a bond might stem from what Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist and anthropologist, describes as a “denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile […] [implying] an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures […]”.

Our economic progress and the bowing of our heads to neo-colonial influences has led us far astray from our roots, our motherland, our territory and the food that our land, under the mastery of the farmer, can provide us with.

We then feel the thrill in immersing ourselves in the territory of our neighbouring countries when we visit a Parmigiano Reggiano cheese factory in Italy or enjoy a paella in Spain.

This attitude has swept all spheres of our nation and is palpable in our obsession with supermarket purchasing, the dominance of non-localised cuisine in the majority of restaurants in Malta and the budget afforded to agriculture by the government.

If we dissect our family trees, we are bound to find one or more farmers in them and we don’t have to go to the 18th century for that. One of our grandparents or great-grandparents were probably farmers. They were the peasants of Maltese society and took it upon themselves to stand strong to be able to leapfrog their sons and daughters into an ‘upper’ stratum: one based less on manual work.

They worked hard to push their children to exploit their educational opportunities and attain favourable jobs, away from the fields.

This is how the alienation from our territory started, our distancing from the source of our food and the consideration of the farmer as a reminder of our past.

It is thus that, in all probability, our recent ancestors unconsciously imploded the agricultural sector in an act of selflessness.

History will judge our ability to return to our roots and our territory and to re-find in our farmers their centrality in our sense of identity.

We don’t have to abandon our jobs and start tilling the land to do that. But in this process of re-discovery we should acknowledge that it was the steadfast resolve of our ancestors – probably peasants working our land – that raised us all towards our current privilege. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants.

Malcolm Borg is coordinator of Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi.