A Precautionary Tale

by Philip Ackerman-Leist

  “Do people know what a treasure you have here in your house?” I asked Robert.

  “Not yet,” he said, with a twinkle forming in his eye and an almost mischievous grin forming on his face. “But we have a surprise coming for the politicians and their lobbies.” He carefully lowered the heavy wooden lid, its hinges creaking, and we put the weights back on top. He called Edith to bring some of her panels to the Stube.

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by “panels,” but I followed Robert back through the simple foyer and through the door to their Stube. Every house in the South Tirol has its central room, the Stube, the center of the daily orbits of family and guests. Robert motioned for me to take a seat at the table, familiarly placed in the Gottesecke, God’s corner, which was traditionally adorned with a crucifix and some token grains as appreciation for the previous year’s harvest. Never had I been invited into a house in which the decorative assortment of grains hanging off the crucifix made so much sense.

  Robert poured me a glass of Hollundersaft, a drink made with water and the sweetened syrup of elderberry blossoms, and a few minutes later Edith appeared with a large box containing about a dozen wood-framed panels. She set it beside the table and pulled out several of them to show me what she’d created. Each thick wooden frame contained several stems of grain with perfect seedheads, carefully aligned in artistic fashion, complemented by a description of the grain variety represented in the frame. The panels were stunning—the simplicity of the frames offset the natural beauty of each plant. I could see the sturdiness of the stems, the geometric alignment of the seeds along the grain head, the distinctive character of the seeds and their hulls—every variety suddenly had its own artistic grace and beauty.

  “How many of these panels do you have?” I asked.

  A smile swept across her face. “One hundred,” she replied. She explained that the panels would all be part of a traveling exhibit of the history of grain cultivation in the Vinschgau and beyond. It would be an educational tool for helping people not only to understand their local history but also to see what was at risk in the South Tirol with the influx of monocultures, pesticides, and the patenting of life.

  Edith and Robert had financed it all on their own. The politicians and lobbyists weren’t interested in financing a project that would lead to questions about where Big Apple and its cronies were headed—and the Malser Haide was their ultimate goal.

  Robert shook his head in frustration. “The environmental groups, like ours, we’re fighting for a healthy landscape, and we’re the unreliable voters, the ones the politicians can’t count on, so they try to starve us out financially.”

  Robert and Edith were about to put that old saying to the test. They had the seed. Now they were going to have their say.

  CHAPTER 6

  Seduction

  Land grabbing. At first I thought that he’d uttered a word in German, but then I realized just how universal both the word and the reality had become: It was happening in Mals. And nobody knows the nitty-gritty of a town’s business better than a veterinarian with four wheels and a ticket to step onto the land and into the lives of the people who steward the bulk of a town’s landscape.

  The rest of Peter Gasser’s point was in cadenced, regimented high German —an echo of the march that he saw coming up the valley: “Das Landschaftsbild wird zerstört”—the landscape is going to be destroyed—he said, “through concrete posts, plastic nets, chain-link fence. Trees have to be removed because trees make shade. Everything is unproductive. Everything has to go. Then a big fence has to be made so that the deer can’t get in. And then come the concrete posts and plastic nets—and then comes the poison.”

  He shook his head and leaned over from the couch with a bottle tipped toward my glass, and he filled the silence for a moment with the quick gurgle and splash of the wine. Then he picked up his half-empty glass and peered into it before looking up with what should have been an expression of melancholy to go with the deep red wine. Instead I saw a face that had turned resolute, with a glint of mischief.

  “There are two possibilities,” he continued. “Either we just watch how the land is sold, how the land is destroyed, and how the poison is sprayed everywhere . . . or we somehow set ourselves in motion to do something.”

  The wineglass almost looked out of place in his thick fingers until he cradled its basin in his callused palm and gave his wine a quick swirl.

  “If we just watch and don’t do anything, then in twenty years we will no longer be the lords of our own village. We’ll be bought out.”

  In a town that straddles the borders of three countries, the influx of people and ideas is likely to create a people who are comfortable thinking outside of their cultural norms. And so it is with the Malsers, who have a reputation for being, as Peter describes it, relativ eigenartig, or “somewhat idiosyncratic.” Were they not eigenartig, the Malsers never would have begun to question what most other South Tiroleans had accepted—the influx of apples and everything else that came with them: money, power, influence, and a constant nod to the status quo.

  However, not only did the Malsers question what was happening, but they also took it one step further: They decided to do something about it, in unusually creative ways.

  As it turned out, Mals had a collection of people like Peter Gasser. Ordinary citizens, not practiced in politics or particularly polished in activism, they were nonetheless Querdenkers, a term that translates into “diagonal thinkers” or “cross thinkers”—people who think in a different direction, outside of the box. Where they come together is where an uprising starts, although sometimes even a beginning has a long history.

  For thirty years Peter had been a member of the Umweltschutzgruppe Vinschgau (USGV), the Environmental Protection Group of the Vinschgau. The USGV had focused on issues such as biodiversity research and education, renewable energy, green transportation, and development pressures in sensitive ecosystems. All the while, Peter felt like something bigger was brewing, something that threatened the town in which he’d spent his entire life: the looming looting of his town’s past and its future, all in one swift monocultural heist. He knew that his clients—mountain farmers who were scraping by in a peak-and-valley economy that mirrored their tended terrain—would be the first to throw their hands up, first in disgust but then, if they were ground down enough, later in surrender.

  Peter didn’t know what to do about it, but he had mentioned his concerns to Ulrich Veith soon after he was elected mayor in 2009, hoping the young new mayor might have a fresh perspective on what could be done to thwart the takeover. They were in sync on their concerns, but neither had an immediate strategy. And back then they were dealing with creep rather than crisis. Perceived threats are much harder to confront in the policy world than are dire realities.

  The clarion call came soon thereafter, however, when Günther Wallnöfer called them both with the news that his first cutting of hay in 2010 had tested positive for pesticide residues, and he was going to have to dispose of it and have the summer’s next two cuttings tested.

  It was time to act. Peter, Ulrich, Günther, and any other allies they could muster would have to develop a strategy as they went. There were no real models. As far as they could tell, they were in unprecedented legal terrain, without a map. But at least they were on home turf.

  Few people within a farming community get such a clear cross section of the daily realities of their town as the local veterinarian. Out on every kind of thoroughfare at all hours of day and night and invited into the shadowed crannies of a farm in some of the farmer’s darkest hours, a large-animal vet brokers the covenant between human and beast. In the process the vet takes a constant pulse of farmer well-being and gathers a more complete picture of the local landscape than almost anyone else in the community. And the best way to get a taste of that life is to ride shotgun with him and see him in action with his clients—both the four-legged a
nd the two-legged types.

  I first met Peter in 2015 when Douglas Gayeton, Michael de Rachewiltz, and I were working our way through the Mals directory of Querdenkers, speeding from place to place, meeting the cast of characters who’d put Mals on the global map as a hot spot for ordinary citizens taking on giants in order to control their own destiny and pass on a better world to their children and grandchildren. The story was a perfect fit for Douglas, a multimedia artist and cofounder of the Lexicon of Sustainability who is always in search of David-and-Goliath stories. Michael de Rachewiltz, a friend of three decades from Brunnenburg Castle and Agricultural Museum, was intrigued by this history in the making and was kind enough to be our local networker, translator, and driver.

  We were in pursuit of Peter while he was on his morning rounds, trying to catch up with him between appointments. As we got closer to Mals and tried to pinpoint a meeting time and location, it became a game of cat and mouse, but with cell phones. We’d get a time and location estimate and then a return call. He would be delayed. Call back in ten minutes. But by that time, he was in a barn or technologically incapacitated with an arm inside a cow, unable to answer. Finally we ended up at a café in Burgeis, the wrong one at first, it turned out, but we walked up in the direction of Edith and Robert’s house and saw our destination. As soon as we entered, we could identify the man whose voice at the bar matched the deep dialect we’d heard on the phone.

  Tall and broad-shouldered, Peter Gasser is virtually ubiquitous in the town of Mals, darting in and out of cafés for quick shots of caffeine between visiting the barns and fields of the surrounding villages in his jeep. We’d finally caught up with him in one of his favorite cappuccino stations not far from one of his usual regular stops—the barn that housed the herd owned by the Marienberg Abbey.

  Peter’s physical presence commands attention even without the green scrubs and big rubber boots that he dons for each farm visit. His thick mountain dialect, delivered in a gravelly baritone voice, blends seamlessly into the earthiness of stone, timbers, and muck found in hillside barns, while it has to be softened inside the cafés, where he catches snippets of the local news and checks his phone for emergencies and appointment changes.

  His days are full, and the nights hold no guarantee of rest. No matter the venue, he keeps a close eye on the time, his day segmented by next stops. An engaging conversationalist, Peter is given to intense analysis more than relaxed contemplation. When considering a question, he tends to lower his head slightly and knit his brows for a fraction of a second before offering what is certain to be a pragmatic and unembellished diagnosis. If the topic is particularly complex, he is likely to lift up his sunglasses a bit and nestle them more securely in his tussled wavy hair before firing off a series of concise points in response.

  Born and raised in Mals, he has come to know the region’s landmarks, characters, animals, and stories in ways that stretch far beyond his five decades. He understands how they all fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces. Caring for livestock involves multiple forms of listening: While a stethoscope is a window into a cow’s health, the farmer’s observations are just as important to the diagnosis. By the time it’s all over, the cow’s story is often but a subplot within a much larger narrative. If anyone in Mals has a solid grasp of what’s ailing farmers as well as their animals, it’s Peter, so his diagnosis of land grabbing carries weight.

  It wasn’t just the insights gleaned from his daily treks from farm to farm, village to village, that kept Peter informed. Through USGV, he had long tracked issues related to land use, wildlife, and biodiversity throughout the valley. His combined understanding of animal and environmental health would prove critical to addressing not just Günther’s dilemma but also a much bigger concern: who controlled the destiny of Mals.

  Peter recounted the “monocultural wave” that rose up through the valley. For about two decades there had been several orchards in Mals, but they never created any issues or tensions in the community. The town felt pristine in comparison with the towns farther down the valley. In fact, his wife, Margit, had grown up in Schlanders, a town about 14 miles (23 km) away in the lower Vinschgau that is inundated in apples. When they married in 1993, she kept remarking how liberating and healthy it was to live in Mals where she could savor a varied landscape and not be surrounded by the constant spraying of pesticides.

  However, something changed and those few orchards in Mals shifted from an anomaly to a harbinger. With the dawning of the twenty-first century, the mythical temptation of the apple conspired with the sweet taste of wealth—and seemingly overnight several more orchards appeared. While climate change played a role, Peter described how a heated apple economy accelerated the influx of orchards. Some local farmers were tempted by the fact that they could make four or five times as much money by growing apples as they could raising livestock and some other crops; however, it was the farmers in the lower reaches of the valley and elsewhere in the South Tirol who created a situation ripe for land grabbing.

  Farmers in the lower Vinschgau and all the way to Bozen had filled virtually every available hillside and hollow with apples and other fruits, to the point that there was almost no additional land for planting or purchase. If a farmer could find an available parcel in those other areas, it would cost about 1 million euros (over $1 million) for a hectare (2.47 acres) in comparison with 70,000 to 80,000 euros in Mals and surrounding towns. Suddenly the buying spree was on, and within a few short years land prices in the town jumped to about five times their previous level, bumping up the value of a hectare in Mals to 300,000 to 400,000 euros.

  While those prices seem astronomical and utterly unaffordable to anyone running a farm, the apple farmers down below were netting 30,000 to 40,000 euros per year on a single hectare—sometimes more, depending on varieties, quality, and the international markets. With such high net earnings and no obligation among farmers to pay any income tax—only a minimal parcel fee—apple farmers from outside were able to come into Mals and buy land at what was, for them, a bargain. The fast and furious land speculation drove prices up quickly.

  Apple farmers seemed to have every advantage available over the traditional farmers in Mals. Not only were their incomes four or five times greater than the livestock farmers’, but they didn’t have to milk twice a day, 365 days a year. They even had several months in which there was little to no work to do in the orchards. One other key factor did not escape Peter’s keen reckoning: The apple industry was just that. Farms become factories, and tasks became perfunctory. The apple industry was ripe for less skilled laborers, most of whom were being hired on the cheap to come in for a three- or four-week harvest period, whereas livestock farms required more sophisticated laborers for longer periods of time. However, with meager earnings, livestock farmers continued to function as they had for millennia —with the support of extended family and neighbors who would pitch in at critical times. “They continue to think that they are powerful and strong,” Peter noted, “but they’re weak when they have to survive in these international markets.

  “Still,” he added, perking up, “the young farmers in our town amaze me. They say they want to be livestock farmers—they don’t want to grow apples. They want to continue to milk cows and send their animals up to the high pastures in summer, growing grains and other crops on a small scale.”

  That those young farmers and their parents remain so committed to the traditional farming of the region would strike any outsider as almost masochistic, but it makes sense to Peter. “Think about it,” he said. “Farmers and animals have existed so closely together in this region for four or five thousand years, there’s a bond there that isn’t easily broken. For thousands of years, people lived in close proximity with goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle—at times in their houses but mostly underneath or directly beside their houses. That was the traditional architecture, the traditional way of life.”

  It’s not all hopeless, though, h
e insisted, and he offered the Querdenker perspective. “Despite what you hear from the politicians and lobbyists in Bozen, agriculture itself doesn’t play that big of a role in our economy. Fruit, wine, livestock, and wood products—combined, they are only about 4 percent of the South Tirolean economy. Tourism is 25 percent, and it depends upon a healthy, beautiful, and open landscape. Tourism doesn’t benefit from having tourists sit at their hotel breakfast table beside the window, only to have pesticides drifting in.” It wouldn’t be long before those same politicians and lobbyists wished that there wasn’t a veterinarian who was just as attentive to economic realities as he was to what was happening to livestock and their landscape.

  At first Peter, Ulrich, and Günther all hoped for some common ground between fruit growers and the organic and livestock farmers in town. That common ground had a name: buffer zones. Everyone hoped that there might be a way to establish specified safe distances between orchards and other agricultural parcels, along with clear protocols of when and how orchardists should spray. With the prevailing Vinschgerwind showing its force by sculpting trees and forcing heavy-laden grain crops to bow prostrate, farmers had to agree on ways that spraying could be limited to still periods when the risk of drift would be minimized.