With the grain renaissance under way, researchers at the Laimburg center had teamed up with Kornkammer (literally, “the granary”)—a group of farmers, bakers, and others who wanted to bring back the grain-growing varieties and traditions of the area—to test fifteen new varieties of rye that could grow at an elevation of about 5,000 feet (1,500 m). The goal was to assess how the varieties performed agriculturally and their potential for solid economic return, but they also tested the baking qualities of the yields. It was one thing to grow the grains successfully, but if the resulting breads didn’t meet traditional culinary expectations, the likelihood of using the new rye varieties to help restore the Upper Vinschgau’s status as the breadbasket of the region was slim to none.
Just as the “rye data” were released and excitement was building about several promising varieties that met the needs of farmers and bakers alike, Günther returned with news of his meeting with the governor on March 28. Distraught by the news of the proposed research orchard—and still unaware that there would actually be two research orchards—the Malsers saw their excitement turn to discontent. Despite the fact that Laimburg was responsible for overseeing both the grain research and the new experimental orchard, the locals didn’t see the two visions of the future as compatible.
It was clear that the politicians and lobbyists had aligned, and they were sending a well-heeled vanguard up the valley to be the first boots on the ground. It was less about research than it was about putting a stake in the ground—concrete posts, actually, followed by an army of fruit trees.
In Minuteman fashion, as soon as it became clear to the Malsers that Big Apple was moving in, they activated their own troops—of activists. Ägidius, Peter, Alexander, Günther, Konrad, and others began to rally their colleagues from Adam & Epfl, the USGV, Kornkammer, the Association for Alternative Agriculture (Bund Alternativer Anbauer, or BAA), the Working Association of Biodynamic Agriculture, and organic farming organizations. Appreciative of the specialized points of focus and the tactics of each group, some of the Malsers belonged to more than one group. It was clear that in order to take on the larger forces making their way into their community, they needed to band together and use their home-turf advantage, along with guerrilla tactics that might somehow undermine the conventional power plays born out of Bozen. It was a long shot, though, with politicians, the apple cooperatives, and the South Tirolean Farmers’ Association (SBB) all eager to see Big Apple grow in every direction it could.
Still, one person’s frontier tends to be another person’s heritage.
By March 31, three days after Günther’s visit with the governor, the activists had organized a public Lokalaugenschein, or inspection, of the proposed research site. They met at a local pizzeria in Laatsch in the early afternoon, just below Günther’s dairy farm, and walked up the paved hiking and biking path that runs between the villages of Laatsch and Schleis—right in between Günther’s and Alexander’s farms and amid a patchwork assortment of fields: a mix of hay meadows, grain fields, and small pastures. Positioned beside the recreational path and a small but fast-flowing river, the site offered the perfect opportunity to research the impacts of drift on nearby farms, recreational areas, and waterways. It was hard to imagine a better spot to ruin in order to learn what was already obvious to the locals.
Not far above the research orchard site sit several dozen small farms in the tiny village of Schleis. One of those farms is located on one of several side spurs off the main drag in the village, a side street that seems busiest at dawn, when all the farmers along the street pull their large milk cans on wheels up to the main road for the daily milk pickup. There’s barely enough room at the intersection for the farmers to line up their shiny metal containers along the stone walls of the adjacent houses, and the ritual is a reminder that small-scale, diversified agriculture continues even as fancier facades don the village’s barns and houses. Just as important, the early-morning banter of farmers waiting by their milk cans for the milk truck driver and whatever news he brings with him is core to the village’s tightly woven social fabric.
Migihof, the Migi Farm, is similar to cheesemaker Alexander Agethle’s farm just across the stream in that they both feature a courtyard created by a tight cluster of house, big barn, and an assortment of storage buildings. The blend of darkened wood, tasteful stonework, and white plaster offers protection from the worst of winds and a harbor for the sun’s lingering warmth, as evidenced by the flowers, herbs, and trees that bring it all to life. On the far end of the courtyard from the street entrance, a path follows the left edge of the barn to the barnyard gate, where the vista opens up and mountains take over the bottom third of the sky. The view from the barnyard drops toward Laatsch, in the direction of the research orchard.
It was at that barnyard’s gate that Eduard Marth put one boot up onto the lower rail, leaned in, sprawled his long arms over the edge, and invited me to step up and do the same. Spry and fit, thanks to his twin passions of farming and cycling, he sported a full head of wavy white hair set off by salt-and-pepper sideburns. With his lean frame and long stride, he looked like he could easily vault the gate if he had the mind to do so. Tight on time but not on energy, he’d given up part of his chore-filled Sunday afternoon to show us his farm and introduce us to his family, even though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of three Americans and an Italian so intrigued by his grain fields.
When he learned that I raised a rare breed of cattle back in the States, the uncertainty faded and any issues of communication melted away. The two of us had slipped to the back of the farm where his favorite cow was in the picturesque barnyard, milling about and nibbling at various treats an hour or so before it was time to step into the milking parlor for the day’s second milking. There’s a certain communion between humans that can happen only amid the utter contentment of satisfied ruminants, and it’s intensified when both people appreciate just what it takes for nature and humans to create such a magnificent animal.
As she soaked in the sun, we basked in the delight of the sheen of her coat and the perfection of her straight back, broad hips, and sound legs. Sensing our admiration—or maybe it was my accent—she meandered over to let Eduard rub her cool black muzzle while I scratched her right above her tailhead, the universal point of cattle appreciation the world over. The Marth family kept a few cows on their diverse 12.5 acres (5 ha) and shipped the organic milk their family didn’t consume to a local processor. Much like his ancestors who had run the farm before him, Eduard and his wife, Helga, also had draft horses and grew grains, potatoes, cucurbits (members of the squash family), and an assortment of vegetables. And they grew a number of old varieties of fruits in a traditional Streuobstwiese, a mixed orchard consisting of apples, plums, pears, apricots, and berries.
Eduard and Helga had inherited more than a farm when they married in 1977; they had also inherited a traditional approach to agriculture. But it wasn’t until their first daughter encountered health problems at a young age that they really began to consider just how important traditionally raised and prepared food was to their family’s health—and the degree to which it contrasted with the highly processed and chemical-infused foods that were beginning to stream in by way of grocery stores.
Helga recalls the moment she realized that they had to make a conscious choice about how they wanted to grow their food. Eduard’s father was an avid rose gardener, and one day he was preparing to spray his roses with pesticides, covering all the rest of the garden with cardboard to prevent any contamination of their food. The thought of using something potentially toxic to their family near their food and the children’s play area didn’t settle well with Helga. The risk didn’t seem necessary, and at that point, Helga decided that all of their food would be organic, and they would do all that they could to produce most of it themselves. The goal was to feed themselves first; anything extra would be sold to support their family.
For more than thirty years,
they have been growing their own grain, processing it, and baking their own bread. Now a certified “farm teacher,” Helga offers classes to school groups and others interested in understanding farm-to-table, soil-to-mouth, historical traditions, and future health. With the village kindergarten on the same street, in full view of the agricultural cycles as they unfolded in the valley below, Migihof was in the perfect location for helping the next generation to savor their heritage and perhaps decide to stay on and preserve it—or at least come back after finding out how rich the traditions were in a world already stripped of so much.
Of course, Helga and Eduard had long known that theirs was an uphill cultural battle in an era when tools were traded in for devices and nutrition was sacrificed for convenience, but they had never thought that farmers would be the biggest threat to a sane and healthy agriculture. Looking down the valley from their farm, however, they could see the grim realities.
Earlier in the afternoon, while out in his grain field, I’d asked Eduard about the future of livestock agriculture and growing grains. He waved his hand across the vista to point out the checkered landscape in the broad valley below us, field sizes ranging from a partial acre to several acres. “We have very many small parcels. You can’t grow hedges there, and, well, . . . why should I protect myself from pesticides? The polluters have to protect their neighbor so that their pesticides don’t get to their neighbors’ property. The perpetrator has to protect the neighbor, and I as a farmer shouldn’t have to protect myself from my neighbor’s pesticides. That’s a completely wrong attitude, don’t you think?”
When we went to his farm afterward, he pulled out a beautiful sheaf of spelt, still on the stalk. Eighteen sheaves were tied together to make the shock, which was as tall as Eduard himself. He pulled off a few grains and showed me the hull that makes spelt less appealing to some farmers and consumers—it’s not easy to remove—and hard for birds to eat. It also protects the grain from pesticides. “But the neighboring farmer should be protecting me against pesticides,” he said, “not the grain itself.”
At that point Helga chimed in. “Good bread is very important for my family. We’ve baked our own bread for over thirty years. Bread can only be good if the grain is good, and the grain is only good when there are no pesticides in it.”
What appeared perfectly logical to a farmer didn’t seem to concern others, however, who apparently had no qualms about replacing the fundamental sustenance of grains with an international commodity.
A walk can bring things into focus sometimes, and the informal group inspection of the proposed research orchard at the end of March did just that. The chatter of the folks walking up the bike path melded with the gurgle of the spring-fed waters in the river paralleling their short promenade. Once they arrived, the chatter turned to dialogue, with the organizers explaining what they knew of the proposal and fielding questions and comments from the group.
As they discussed their options, it seemed clear that they had little opportunity to influence the governor or his covey of bureaucrats, but there was still a possibility of getting the mayors of surrounding towns to weigh in on the misguided idea. Representatives from the different organizations that had helped to organize the site inspection took note of the various responses from the participants and decided that their best course of action was to write a public letter to the mayors laying out their concerns.
Within days, they had all agreed upon the wording of the letter, and they sent it to the public officials and the local media in early April. It was their first collective political move, and the carefully crafted letter laid out what would become the fundamental principles of a grassroots political campaign that no one could have predicted, least of all the provincial powers and one of their most esteemed cronies, Big Apple.
The letter, addressed to the mayors of Mals and four surrounding municipalities, came from five organizations committed to sustainable development in the Upper Vinschgau—Kornkammer, USGV, BAA, Working Association of Biodynamic Agriculture, and the citizens’ initiative of Adam & Epfl. “The future of this valuable cultural landscape lies in the direction of local resources and the biological and natural health of humans and nature, rather than the furthering of intensive fruit production,” they wrote. They rattled off their reasons for concern: the dusting and drift from pesticides, exacerbated by regional winds; the high levels of pesticide residue found in grass and hay samples; the threat to organic growers and food producers, not to mention tourists on open bike paths and walking trails and children on playgrounds. Every one of their watercourses, the letter writers noted, was impacted. All this, together with the fact that there were “increasingly alarming investigations into the effects of pesticides on humans and animals, especially when the active substances work in combination,” made the people of the region “increasingly concerned about their habitat and their health.”
Since concerns like these prompted the Laimburg Research Center to set up an experimental research site to study drift and spread near Laatsch, they wrote, authorities should heed the precautionary principle. In other words, potentially harmful activity should cease until those doing it can prove it is safe.
A sleeping giant isn’t easily roused, but it will occasionally twitch and swat when it senses a pesky presence swirling about its head. Such was the case when the Südtiroler Bauernbund (SBB), the powerful farmers’ association in the region, got wind of the letter, especially this part:
Despite the fact that we reject the experiment, we find it important that the gathered data should be established in another location and especially that the possible dangers to public health be taken seriously. On these grounds, we hope and expect that you, as the responsible parties for public health in our communities, stop any pesticide applications until the results of the research are presented. The right of the local citizens and the vacationing guests should be understood as urgent. The potential health risks from drift and spreading, which leads to the research, requires that further use of pesticides stop until the data is received and the dangers can be ruled out.
Irritated by any suggestion that its member farmers or its allies were somehow out of line and emboldened by their friends in high places, they mounted enough energy for a mild swat at what they were sure was a passing pest, not a future fly in the ointment.
The SBB put out a statement in favor of the research project, with their regional chair, Andreas Tappeiner, noting,
We need scientific data to answer the outstanding questions and then to discuss them in a substantive and scientifically sound manner. . . . Our goal must be to manage our fruit in a manner that is as environmentally friendly as possible. We must be clear that the further development of agriculture and the establishment of new cultural methods in the Upper Vinschgau must go hand in hand. The Laimburg trials can be of help.1
The statement also noted that it would be interesting to explore pesticide drift issues related to spraying stone fruits such as apricots and cherries—possible new crops in the Upper Vinschgau. Those words would prove prescient, or at least politically informed. Local residents would soon learn that not one but two different experimental orchards were to be established, one for apples and one for stone fruits. Goliath got a twofer without exerting any significant effort. It was barely worth celebrating. After all, when there’s no perceived threat, there’s no real victory.
Little did Big Apple know that as the petals were falling that spring, so were the gloves. Savvy local officials in Mals had quietly made a change in the town’s municipal code: Successful referendums would now be binding. Chapter 4, Article 40, Point 5 in the Mals municipal code was a quiet but decisive step toward direct democracy: “The affirmation of a referendum serves as a decision that the municipal council or the municipal committee should again take up and reconsider the issue on a broad basis.”
David had quietly put a stone in his sling, and Goliath hadn’t noticed.
CH
APTER 9
A Precautionary Tale
The telltale black car with the red trim and blue lights reappeared and parked by the Mals pharmacy several times a day for months and months. The Carabinieri, the Italian national police, had made it quite clear that they were ready to protect the town’s eclectic pharmacist from anyone who might decide to turn threats into an actual physical assault. They pulled up every so often while he was at work in the pharmacy or when he was opening and closing its doors and metal security gate.
Johannes Unterpertinger had spent months lending his scientific expertise and his rhetorical savvy to the Mals activists. As a result, he was harassed repeatedly with abusive phone calls and disconcerting death threats. While those threats to the normally jovial pharmacist’s life and limb were deterred, the perpetrators directed their aggression elsewhere. Johannes’s family grave site was desecrated, his organic garden destroyed. And then there are the lawsuits that continue to dog him and have already cost him thousands upon thousands of euros, simply for being the point person in a legitimate democratic process. Goliath had been roused, and his minions lunged first for the person at the tip of the spear.
Johannes is a striking figure whether he is cloaked in his white lab coat in the Mals Apotheke or out walking his dog, Bono, through the streets of Mals and up the peaceful paths along the gurgling irrigation canals above the village. Standing tall amid most crowds, he is easy to spot in town or at his daily litany of appointments and meetings. His clean-shaven head may give him away—or it may be hidden underneath a whimsical cap. He’s a druggist by day and author by night (pen name Hans Perting) who somehow finds time in between to run his own publishing company. Such a combination isn’t such a challenge for someone who suffers from insomnia and seems to recognize no bounds in his intellectual and artistic pursuits.
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