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Editorial

COMBATING FOREST FIRES

A BATTLE WE CAN WIN TOGETHER

by Stefano Cazora

n Italian, a number of definitions, comparisons, quotations, and references,
all relate to the element of fire, our daily companion in our daily language
Iand in our lives. For example the rhetorical language of Italian sports com-
mentators defines strikers on the soccer pitch as “bocche da fuoco” (more or less, “fir-
ing cannons”), while in everyday usage the term “fuoco di paglia” (literally mean-
ing “a fire sparked by hay”), describes a short lived event of any kind.
But there are also many aspects of our everyday lives in which fire has no par-
ticular role except as a common ethymological root: “mettere a fuoco”, means to focus
one’s eyes, or the optical lenses of spectacles and of a photo camera, and there is also
the troublesome skin disease called “fuoco di Sant’Antonio” (St. Antony’s fire), or
erysipelas.
When Silvae chose the name Focus for the section containing the main body of
articles dealing with a specific issue, it certainly did not imagine that one day the
term, which sounds to Italian ears as a foreign, modern, journalistic term today,
would actually be brought back to its original, Late Latin meaning, “fire”, which
conjures up the idea of flames, smoke, and sparks. In brief, the section entitled
Focus in this issue of the Silvae deals almost exclusively with real fire, the fire
which destroys forests, and will examine these fires’ consequences on the human, eco-
logical and material plane.
However, the opening article will deal with another heating topic which deter-
mines enormous damages and a great loss in terms of money, just as it happens with
fires, namely forgeries of agrofood products. This contribution is written by Paolo
De Castro, Minister of agriculture, food and forest policies. In a further issue of
our journ we will be opening a debate on the fake Made in Italy wich risks to com-
Anno
promise a productive sector of economic and qualitative excellence.
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