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CHAPTER 13
management experts, agro-ecologists
and sustainable development experts.
“We believe transitional practices
that work toward profound social
transformation should not be limited to
the cities. Rural areas can be dynamic,
progressive and experimental,”
Federico shares. Listening to him and
the friends he brought to dinner –
Carlotta, Michele and others – I am
left with a real warmth. They really
‘care’ about environmental protection,
rural sustainability and more just
and healthier futures. It is a care that
bubbles over and flows into you at
the dinner table, motivates you to
question your own work and get
stuck in.
Cultivating a new
rural reality
moving to the country for the first on the condition that you look after
time. Several are friends of mine, the land, maintain it from fire hazard.””
keen to get their hands in the soil This land is often cheap or free and
and ensure healthier air and wild play allows young people to get their foot
hopeful. Sifting through these for the children they hope to have. in the door, put into practice their
chapters, you get a picture of rural Porto di Terra is one such space that ideas and see if they work without
Europe: its beauty and vibrancy, its connects and supports these people too much financial loss. Again, a
complex history and its current and and their projects. As we have seen simple but powerful idea. It has its
future challenges. Time and again, in Karditsa, in Beaufortain and in limitations though, since it does
our writers lamented the loss of the Transylvania, access to land is often not provide the stability for those
young from rural areas. Seeking better one of the key reasons young people leasing the land to make the kind of
opportunities, across the continent, move out of the countryside. long-term plans that make peasant
It is a care that also leaves me
many young people have moved to
cities and abroad.
“We rent the land here, in formal agriculture viable. Nonetheless, at
and informal loans from local, elderly least for the time being, it creates a
landowners,” Carlotta Ebbreo tells kind of intergenerational cohesion
Some have stayed, some have me. “They say: “Here you can have it and ensures careful stewardship of
returned and some urbanites are for five years to try out your projects the land.
But the story does not end there.