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Farming in PFAS-Contaminated Areas: An Ethnographic Exploration within the Veneto Region
Summary
Researchers conducted ethnographic fieldwork with farmers in PFAS-contaminated areas of Italy's Veneto region, finding widespread anxiety about land and crop safety, distrust of institutional risk communication, and lasting economic and psychological harm from industrial PFAS contamination of agricultural soils and water.
This article explores the results of an ethnographic investigation carried out between November 2022 and March 2023, within the agricultural sector in highly PFAS-contaminated areas in the Veneto region, Italy. In order to understand how farmers experienced the contamination and what they think about their experiences, field research and semi-structured interviews were conducted. In the absence of any institutional support and clear regulations, the institutional laissez-faire approach has accentuated individual accountability, leaving farmers alone to deal with these chemical compounds. Considering this context, the precarity of the farming sector, a main feature of the socioecological context of the contamination, along with the fractures and silence resulting from the contamination, are analyzed.