The social farm network for the promotion of new relationship between agriculture, economy and society

Social Farming (SF) is a traditional as an innovative activity for farmers that regards the use of resource from agriculture for rehabilitation and social inclusion. Despite the relevant diffusion of SF, it has not specifically been regulated and analyzed still today. To understand the phenomenon a survey was carried out in Sicily, where the SF is aggregated under the name of “Rete delle Fattorie sociali” and included agri-social farms and associations for social promotion, social cooperative and family ones. The study of the system relationships by adopting the Social Network Analysis was carried out. Results provided a “map of the relationships” among the operators involved into social activities of different kind and underlined the role of the “Rete” to coordinate activities and intermediation and to draw relationships with outside-network operators.