A coalition of Eve’s successors were about to have their say.
Beatrice later described how she felt during that conversation with Martina: “My heart started racing: Finally, I felt that I wasn’t alone. She gave me the strength to know that I should and had to do something. I was awakened and driven, and found the self-confidence to begin speaking about environmental issues. I was simply happy to have finally found someone with whom I could actually do something and not just chatter and crawl into a snail shell.”
Revolutionary ideas are known for popping up in odd places. At the time, neither Martina nor Beatrice knew that that one conversation would give rise to a powerful new collection of voices—voices that had been too much in the background up to that point: those of the women of Mals. While some had graced the streets adorned as Eves for the May celebration, the committee meetings and planning had largely been the work of men. It was time to move from informing and discussing to action.
Keenly attuned to the issues of nature, nurture, and nutrition, many of the women had had deep misgivings about the transformation of their historic landscape and its accompanying arsenal of pesticides. Singly, they had been unsure about the merit of their concerns; together they would turn out to be more than just fearless—they were profoundly strategic. The press and the politicians were about to confront a body politic different from what they were used to.
This group of women—who also welcomed men but operated on their own terms—were novices in this game of social media, public relations, and politics, but it would be to their advantage: They would invent the rules as they went along.
And before it was all over, Beatrice would be operating the first certified organic hair salon in the South Tirol.
Martina went home eager to do something but second-guessing herself the whole time. Was she really ready to make such a public statement and begin stirring the pot just as she was beginning to find her way back into her hometown? What if the poll numbers didn’t really reflect people’s sentiments? Nevertheless, she quickly drafted a concise letter to the editor, which she sent to Beatrice to review before forwarding it any further. Once they were both satisfied with the final version, they began making the rounds to friends’ houses and cafés, sticking paper copies in doors and mail slots when no one was home and sending other versions by email. They passed it on to all of their acquaintances who might be interested in signing it and sending it to the local news magazine, the Vinschgerwind.
On May 16, 2013, the magazine published thirteen versions of the letter, with a total of sixty-nine signatures under the various submissions. Each letter was titled Bitte! (Please!) and contained these two lines:
The increasing use of pesticides and herbicides in the municipality of Mals has us highly concerned about our health and especially the health of our children. We ask our mayor, who is responsible for the health of our citizens, to ensure that our environment and our health are not endangered.
While the letter was brief and to the point, it possessed a power that stretched far beyond the boundaries of the South Tirol and all the way to Brussels, home of the European Union Parliament. By calling directly upon the mayor to act on behalf of his citizens’ safety, Martina, Beatrice, and the other signers of the letter were invoking the right of mayors, designated under EU law, to take necessary measures that might exceed their usual powers, in order to assure the safety of their citizens.
They had started to change the game.
As May turned to June, things began to heat up. The letters to the editor had their intended impact: Big Apple and the provincial powers were roused from their slumber by the poke and found themselves in the midst of a game they hadn’t played before. They also weren’t accustomed to playing defense, since offense is the strategy of choice among giants. And the most common error among giants is to mistake beginners for buffoons.
Perhaps it was coincidence, or intuition, or just a result of the grassroots groundswell that was happening in Mals, but another Malser felt the need for a haircut, something she actually didn’t enjoy and tended to avoid for as long as possible.
Pia Oswald had seen the letters to the editor in the Vinschgerwind, and she’d heard that Beatrice was involved. Pia had been feeling the need to get involved in tipping the apple cartel for a while, and she’d felt that women’s voices and perspectives needed to be a more prominent part of the discussions and initiatives. In the end, it was worth getting a haircut.
Pia is a Selbstvorsorgerer—a “self-provider”—who produces an extraordinary supply of fruits, vegetables, small livestock, and honey for her family, and she is a guru among homesteader types in the South Tirol. In her orchards and gardens, tempting fruits abound, and only a few of them are apples. Most are tree fruits and berries with an origin story, a recipe, and a nutritional niche. She and her son also keep bees, and she runs a small daycare out of her home. In addition, she teaches Tirolean gardening skills to new refugees who have settled in Mals.
Pia’s concerns about the influx of intensive fruit production weren’t theoretical. Her homestead is situated along a fast-flowing brook up on the eastern edge of the Mals Heath; the sound of water permeates the entirety of her smallholding. As a beekeeper, she’d been worried for a while about the possibility of conventional fruit growers establishing orchards within flying distance of her hives and too close to her own orchard of heritage fruits to ensure there would be no drifting. Unfortunately, her fears materialized: One of the first apple orchards on the cherished Mals Heath had popped up right across from hedgerows on the edge of her property.
From Pia’s perspective, “The bees are the first victims—they’re the ones that first feel the effects of the pesticides because they take them up directly.”
That’s not a perspective many beekeepers in the South Tirol are willing to share publicly, simply because they are so dependent upon apple growers for hiring them to place their hives near the apple orchards to ensure good pollination. But Pia sees conventional apple orchards as a threat to the health and even the survival of her colonies. “It’s always so dangerous for the bees to fly to blossoms sprayed with pesticides—sometimes so dangerous that they die on contact with these pesticides . . . or they carry the nectar or pollen that has been contaminated with these very fine pesticide particles into the colony and the young brood is fed with this contaminated pollen,” she explains. “That’s the danger for the development of the colonies and for the flying bees, and for that reason I avoid taking my bee colonies into these apple plantations.”
Of course, as Pia points out, the honey made from bees that are exposed to conventionally managed apple plantations is also likely to be contaminated, creating a health risk to humans who savor what is often considered to be one of nature’s purest gifts.
Pia would carry her philosophy of maintaining the health of her family’s bees into what would soon become her newfound political calling, Prävention: “My interest is always in prevention.” Which is what made her call Beatrice, hop in her car, and drive over to Laatsch from her home outside the tiny hamlet of Ulten for a trim and a consultation.
Pia was eager to address the business at hand. As soon as Beatrice was into the rhythm of cutting, Pia let her know that she had long wanted to pull together a group of women to advance the kind of diversified agriculture that she thought still made sense for the region, but she had never felt like it was something she could begin on her own and “give it legs.” She was ready to join forces.
Beatrice was so anxious to call Martina that as soon as she was done cutting, she pulled away the barber’s cape, quickly brushed a few stray clippings from Pia’s collar, and picked up the phone, firing off a stream of dialect, waving her free hand for emphasis, nodding and smiling at Pia. Within what seemed no more than a minute or two, she hung up and welcomed Pia to their growing female force.
Pia’s influence would be critical to the success of the entire pest
icide-free campaign from that point forward—and not just because of the fruit and honey that she would bring to the long meetings that were to come.
Big Apple had finally realized there was a revolution fomenting in Mals, and they responded in kind. On June 18 the South Tirolean Farmers’ Association (SBB) sponsored a public forum in the nearby town of Prad. The evening featured Hermine Reich, the EU commissioner for food safety, who spoke about the EU’s role in overseeing food-safety aspects of pesticides. Two other regional experts lent their expertise on the basics of pesticides in integrated fruit production and the safety of pesticides in the fruit industry. Following the three presentations, there was a podium discussion with six experts, including Hermann Kruse. While Reich maintained the perspective that “within the set limits, there are no health dangers for consumers,” Kruse again expressed his concerns about the unknowns of “poisonous cocktails,” mixes that didn’t fit within the paradigm of measuring the impact of single substances.
The audience lobbed challenging questions to the panelists, driving much of the focus toward the looming questions of drift. Several of the experts touted the rigors of regulations and advances in spray technology, while also decrying the “black sheep” farmers who gave other well-intentioned orchardists a bad reputation.
In the end definitive answers were in short supply that evening, at least in the eyes of the pesticide-free advocates, while questions and concerns abounded. Perhaps the biggest unanswered question came from Günther Wallnöfer, who wondered how regulations or technology were going to solve his problem. After three years of expressing concerns and dealing with pesticide residues and all of the associated costs on his farm, there was still no resolution. Everyone wondered whether Günther would be the first of many with these kinds of the problems . . . and possibly the last of many generations of dairy farmers in the Upper Vinschgau.
While the power still resided with Big Apple and friends, more than its apples were at stake; so was its reputation. Three days after the Prad info session, the Laimburg Research Center would hold a seminar on “Reputation Management as the New Challenge for the Apple Industry in the South Tirol.” Ironically, it was held in the Fürstenburg School for Agriculture and Forestry, directly adjacent to and overlooking the Upper Vinschgau’s biodiversity jewel, the Bernhards’ display gardens. If any of the participants bothered to look out over Edith and Robert’s gardens, they might have remarked that there was much more to lose than a reputation.
Had they looked just a bit farther, toward Marienberg Abbey, they might have noticed new vineyards going in. Abbot Markus is an organic gardener who also appreciates local wines, for communing and communion, so he had made arrangements to plant six thousand PIWI (fungus-resistant) vines on nearly 6 acres (2.3 ha) of the monastery’s south-facing slopes. Not only would the monastery have its own label, but at a height of 4,400 feet (1,340 meters) it would also lay claim to the title of the highest vineyard on the European continent.
Big Apple needed to look out the window to understand what they still weren’t seeing in the mirror: #ReputationManagement.
Meanwhile, throughout the month of June and following the success of the letter to the editor campaign, Beatrice, Martina, and Pia continued to gather a core group of women and a few men who were determined to transform all of the awareness that had built up into direct action, with tangible results. USGV, Adam & Epfl, Kornkammer, the organic certifiers, the new Advocacy Committee, and others had worked hard to gather the data, analyze the policies, bring groups together, and share the information, but the local media and politicians had barely batted an eye so far.
Soon the next group of Querdenkers-turned-activists was born. They named themselves Hollawint, an exclamation of warning in Tirolean dialect. Composed predominantly but not exclusively of women, Hollawint nonetheless became the face of the women of Mals. For Beatrice, women offered something different from the movement for a pesticide-free Mals: “I believe when one is a mother, then she simply has a completely different feel for what life is, and she is then really responsible for one’s own children. She simply wants to guarantee a great, healthy future for her kids and from that simply arises a motherly sensibility.”
June was a reminder that time was of the essence. With every passing summer, more apple orchards were creeping into Mals. The infrastructure for sprinkler systems was almost in place, with supporters promising that it would bring possibilities for farmers to plant crops that would earn them significantly more money than hay, grains, and vegetables.
The rapid advance lured Margit Gasser to the newly formed group. A kindergarten teacher, she had married Peter, the town veterinarian, and moved to Mals where they began to raise a family. Her hometown of Schlanders, a little farther down in the valley, had already been taken over by orchards. “Twenty years ago when I came to Mals I could never have imagined that this monoculture would arrive here, too.”
The childhood she recalls before Big Apple came to her town is as idyllic as a scene from Heidi. “When I was three or four years old, I could run around between the meadows and orchards, where I could smell flowers that came up to my nose . . . I have these memories inside me still.” Those meadows eventually vanished. “And then I realized how we lost them, step by step . . . It happened so subtly—only grass, no more flowers. They were just mowed down, with the views everywhere suddenly blocked by cement posts.”
As more and more joined Hollawint, Martina had already hammered out a long list of projects to catch the attention of the media, the public, and the politicians. No media maven but one determined soul, she had gone from being kein Facebookerin, no Facebooker, to a reasonably competent user who knew whom to call when she needed backup. Social media, it turned out, was a critical way to engage the younger generation and get word out beyond the bounds of the group’s immediate circles. It was also useful when word needed to travel fast.
Within a few short weeks Hollawint had a logo, a website, and a standing biweekly meeting open to the public. By the end of June they had more than fifty members, and a following. It was time to send a message that couldn’t be ignored. They decided to recruit women and their families to turn bedsheets into banners. And once they had, they would transform the villages of Mals into a political statement, hanging the banners from balconies, windows, and cultural icons—all under cover of darkness, and all in a single night.
As the group discussed what message they wanted to send, Pia weighed in with a piece of wisdom that would become the guiding star for the rest of the campaign. Martina explained: “From the beginning, Pia saw our work as somewhat spiritual and positive.” When it came time to work on the banners, she said, Pia made sure that positivity was reflected. YES was everywhere. AGAINST, ANTI, and NO were nowhere to be found. The guiding rule was simple: Focus on what you want, not what you oppose.
What could have been a campaign against pesticides became a clarion call for a pesticide-free future.
It always pays to have a journalist in one’s ranks, too, and Hollawint had recruited the expertise of Katharina Hohenstein, a freelance writer and editor with a penchant for pithiness. With Pia’s counsel in mind, Katharina brainstormed various slogans and sent ideas to Martina via email. Suddenly the Malsers weren’t calling for anything outrageous—they were simply asking for what any mother, father, or citizen might want. Vielfalt und Gesundheit für uns alle! Diversity and health for us all! Für eine gesunde und vielfältige Landwirtschaft! For a healthy and diverse agriculture! Gesundheit und Vielfalt für unsere Kinder, Tiere und Pflanzen! Health and diversity for our children, animals, and plants! Pestizidfreie Gemeinde! Landschaft nützen und schützen! Pesticide-free town! Use and protect the landscape! Frei von Pestiziden—für uns und unsere Gäste. Free from pesticides —for us and our guests.
Hollawint members rallied and set to work collecting bedsheets and turning them into banners over the next few weeks. They also encouraged other women to come pick
up materials for their families to make their own. While everyone added their own flair to the banners and even some wooden signs, the goal was to be consistent in appearance and messaging, making it clear that there was unity across the township’s villages. People traded stencils and art supplies, slowly and quietly building an arsenal of positive messages and allies willing to hang the banners and signs in prominent locations.
Martina was shocked at the enthusiastic response by women across town. When the banners were done, she said, “They were ripped out of our hands!”1 Even women who hadn’t yet joined the cause got involved. Pia went to visit the Bäuerinnen, the women farmers, in the small villages of Ulten and Plawenn near her home, and they surprised her with their willingness to hang banners on and around their farmhouses.
Despite the flurry of activity, the denouement was all under the radar. The night finally came when, after town lights had flickered off, the banners were unfurled. Many people didn’t even realize that their neighbors were also hanging banners until the next day. It turned out to be a case of stealth solidarity.
Mother Nature was given the honors of the unveiling, and on the morning of July 31, 2013, the first rays of light began to creep over the mountains as if they were inhaling the lingering shadows of the night. Down in the valley among Mals’s scattered villages, farmers pulling wheeled milk cans clanked their way toward the pickup points along the medieval labyrinth of village thoroughfares. In fact, it was probably the milk truck drivers who first realized the scope of the overnight mission as they wound their way from village to village, sucking milk from each farmer’s containers and passing on news from one farmer to another of the overnight blossoming of banners and wooden signs. Undoubtedly a lot of heads were shaking around those milk cans, but there were certainly some wry smiles among that independent lot of farmers, some of whom had come in from the fields and barns to find their wives stenciling old linens for a campaign that had yet to unfold. In the end no one had more to lose than the dairy farmers. With an average of 124 acres (50 ha) around them transitioning to apples every year, almost everyone was likely to have some new neighbors soon.
A Precautionary Tale Page 19