Rather than an individualistic future, we must build a future in which cooperation and networking of products and creativity are a shared rule. A future in which one does not look beyond one’s own business or piazza just to find that the neighbours’ grass is always greener. And the example should be set by institutions, the ones that have the highest responsibility in governing the territory and its economy.

The Provincial Authority and the Chamber of Commerce have already taken this strategic direction for the development of our province by signing the Strategic Pact.
A further step in the direction we mentioned above was taken by signing the Memorandum of Understanding, last 26 March, of the Territorial Plan for the Promotion of Treviso’s Integrated Agriculture and Agrofeeding System.
An agreement that confirms the will to promote our territory so that the industry which pulls the economy can go hand in hand with an extremely high quality of life.
This is the final goal at which efforts by the two institutions should be aimed, each of them working towards it with their own autonomous responsibility and sensitiveness. The going will not be easy or quick but it is dictated by strongly-held belief rather than need.

Territorial system and promotional system
We have competing countries which are much closer than China, and in May ten of them will fully enter the European Union. Our small and medium businesses are keeping afloat but they risk getting lost in the global market.
Competition is now high and it has moved at territorial level. But this will be our very goldmine.

A territory where the presence of extremely high quality typical products is ensured, where the people who produce them live and work, where the traces of a unique, millenarian history remain and are fully appreciated, from local cuisine to fashion to monuments, to the picturesque towns in which traditional trades have never disappeared, where research and design sustain hi-tech productions, where the quality and rhythm of life still have a humane face.
Our territory has all these characteristics. We have the task of promoting, nurturing, maintaining and even enhancing them when possible.
A task which does not just involve institutions, Chamber of Commerce, Province, Town Authorities, but all businesses, throughout the craft, commerce, tourism and agro-industry sectors.

Flexible stability
Over the last few centuries our territory was safeguarded by the Benedictine Rule “stabilitas loci”, the stability of the place, i.e. the extremely tight connection between the monks and the monastery where they lived.
Only thus was it possible to safeguard over the centuries scientific research, agricultural and productive development, cultural identity and a large portion of the social growth of European civilisation and culture.
We now have much more advanced tools to preserve and develop our territory. Today like before, though, all businesses need stability and a territory offering resources and new relations to be drawn from in order to be able to compete on world markets.

The Territorial Plan for the Promotion of Treviso’s Integrated Agriculture and Agrifeeding System addresses these needs to build a less precarious future. Steering towards quality leads us to choosing more refined productions, addressing the new demands for high quality tourism and good living.
And we can only do that by fostering the creation of a comprehensive network, which starts from agricultural produce but encompasses the whole territory up to high-tech productions. Projects within this wide-ranging scheme will not have a prefixed budget set in advance. They will have to be devised, discussed, financed and implemented with everybody’s cooperation so that the benefits are shared among all categories, no one excluded.

If our businesses are holding steady, despite the harsh winds of crisis which have been blowing fro a few years now, without looking for the shortcuts afforded by high finance, this means that our niche culture is still alive, that the ever stronger demand for quality of life is an important factor in the modern world and might become, albeit not strategic, certainly a very interesting area for future development.
Being able to put a diverse and higher quality of living on the market is no small feat. The looming changes which are worrying our businesses and our communities can be faced with two different attitudes: those who see the world as it is and ask themselves why, and those who imagine the world as it should be and ask themselves: why not? The Chamber of Commerce and the Province of Treviso, by signing the PAT, have chosen the second way.

Federico Tessari
president CCIAA Treviso