Glasses were raised; spirits were high. The ballot initiative was slated to take place a few weeks later, in June. But the bureaucratic shenanigans weren’t over yet. Just prior to the polling, a South Tirolean government official in Bozen intervened and announced that they would not release the required voter list because the provincial government deemed the ballot initiative inadmissible. Astounded by the last-minute denial but not surprised by the interference from government officials, Ulrich countered that they must release the voting list, since the initiative was approved and adopted by the municipal council. At that point the commissariat suddenly discovered “an error” on the form: The updated request for the voter list must be prepared forty-five days before the vote, he declared. The vote was rescheduled for August 22 through September 5.
Officials in Bozen and the friends of Big Apple were clearly getting nervous. The train wasn’t just out of the station before they’d realized it—it was almost at its destination. They hadn’t taken the novices from nowhere seriously, and now the vote seemed inevitable.
In what could only be viewed as a conciliatory move, Arnold Schuler, the head of agricultural affairs in the province, made it known in June that the government would issue new regulations for pesticide applications, including new distance and buffer regulations. Schuler even proposed to impose fines between 1,000 and 10,000 euros for violations of these new rules. Months later, though, those fines would swirl down to a meager 250 euros or so per infraction—not a significant out-of-pocket expense for an apple farmer who might spend more than that on a single spraying.
The Farmer’s Future campaign made one last-ditch effort to stop the voting just prior to the opening of the polls on August 22. One hundred fifty farmers signed on to a request demanding that the judicial commission’s approval of the ballot initiative be deemed illegal. Unsuccessful, the last-minute appeal seemed to be the final arrow in the opponents’ quiver.
The Advocacy Committee and the various groups supporting the initiative held the last of more than twenty informational sessions right before the polls opened. They invited Schuler and representatives from A Farmer’s Future, but none of them showed up.
The final say was up to the Malsers themselves. At least they hoped so.
CHAPTER 12
Ja!
It was another busy evening. The weight of the August humidity let night settle a little heavier over the villages of Mals. The darkness fell first over Burgeis, Schleis, and Laatsch, the villages tucked up against the mountains on the western side of the valley floor. Then it seeped into the steep hamlets of Matsch and Planeil, and the mountains to the west cast their evening farewells to Mals, Glurns, and Tartsch. Ulten, Plawenn, and Schlinig gradually lost elevated advantage, too, until there wasn’t enough light for anything except mischief.
By this point, both the town police and the Carabinieri, Italy’s national gendarmerie, were used to it. They lived among artful Querdenkers. These weren’t hard-core criminals they were dealing with. They weren’t even seasoned troublemakers. They were novice activists with a flair for being frech—cheeky. They were less interested in convention than in right and wrong.
But this time, in the eyes of the commandant of the Carabinieri, they’d taken it too far. Sunflowers were everywhere. They were floating in the public fountains, placed in public doorways. Bright yellow sunflowers with a JA! in the middle—the symbol of the pesticide-free initiative—were stamped onto streets and manhole covers. Others were painted onto signs and stuck into public flower beds.
The commandant called the mayor and, with a blast of high-velocity Italian, made it clear that the sunflowers in the public spaces were to be removed. Ulrich cordially replied that he appreciated the concern, and said he would ask the town workers to remove them, which he in turn did. But he only asked the workers to remove them and set them aside. Which they did. What happened next was up to the activists. Suffice it to say, the 2014 sunflower crop in Mals from August 22 until September 5 was extraordinary.
Around the same time, the Advocacy Committee had distributed eight-page color brochures throughout the villages of Mals, spreading a blue-sky message: “Choose a healthy future, vote ‘YES!’ on the ballot initiative. YES to livestock. YES to field crops. YES to fruit and berry farming. YES to vegetable farming . . . without the use of very toxic, toxic, health-damaging and environment-damaging chemical-synthetic pesticides and herbicides.” Inside the brochure was the wording of the ballot initiative, the manifesto, and photos and quotes by a diverse array of supporters.
The supporters of the pesticide-free initiative had campaigned diligently and respectfully all the way to the first day of polling. Town officials and advocates for the initiative were careful to design the polling process so that it could accommodate voters. The voting period was set for two weeks to ensure that as many people as possible could vote, and voters could submit their ballots in person, through the mail, or by depositing them into a twenty-four-hour voting vault outside the town hall. Yet despite their passionate advocacy, everyone—from the mayor to the municipal council to the Advocacy Committee—wanted to ensure that the voting process would be beyond reproach. The politicians and the Big Apple allies were all on the lookout for any errors or breaches of judgment that they could use to nullify the legitimacy of the vote. The mayor and other elected officials agreed not to speak publicly on the issue during the voting period.
People in Mals also had little to say about the initiative during the two weeks of voting. Margit Gasser remembers the polling period all too well: “That was such a long period of time in the village when there was such a crippling silence. It wasn’t talked about anymore, not during the referendum. Nobody even looked for a conversation about it.”
It was like sitting in a hospital ward, waiting on word from the doctors about whether a loved one was going to pull through or not. Talking wasn’t going to change anything. There was nothing to do but wait.
When Ulrich became mayor in 2009, Mals was on a path toward becoming an enviable model of a truly sustainable community. The villages were advancing their capacity to capture energy from area’s fast-moving waters and turn it into electrical power that not only met their needs but also generated an excess that could be sold at a profit. The USGV and others had worked for years to bring back the train that took tourists, schoolchildren, and commuters back and forth between the Upper Vinschgau and the jobs and cities down in the valley. Not only did they find a way to get the rail lines functioning again, after decades of sitting idle, but they also brought in a sleek and colorful new train, designed by the Swiss, that became an attraction in and of itself. Quiet and comfortable, it featured large windows that unveiled the landscape along its serpentine path up the valley, along with bike racks, recycling bins, and compost containers. Designed to run on electricity, generated in part by the valley’s hydropower systems, it ran on diesel until the necessary infrastructure was in place to convert it to electric power.
Bike paths and hiking trails were upgraded throughout the town, and Ulrich oversaw the conversion of the main thoroughfare in Mals into a pedestrian zone, creating an ambience that invited conversation and freewheeling children. He also worked with town officials and community members to increase bus services and even a car-share program for residents unable to or uninterested in owning their own cars.
In addition, the agritourism opportunities continued to grow. Food and fitness—tourists could pursue both in Mals in a way that didn’t seem possible elsewhere, simply because the landscape was so unspoiled and the region’s high-quality foods were so valued and celebrated.
Local businesses were creating new niches by teasing out the tensions between tradition and innovation. Food and ecotourism were fueling the Mals renaissance. Not that it was a simple equation. To the contrary, it involved building a constellation of eco-oriented goods and services, with businesses collaborating as much as competing. There was more collective
success in growing a diverse and thriving economy than in building ever-bigger businesses that simply consumed one another until only a hollow shell of infrastructure remained. Mals was a network of family-scale businesses, but it took collaboration and focused leadership to maintain not only that scale but also that ethos.
For example, right along the pedestrian zone in the center of Mals sits one of the town’s gems, the Hotel Greif. Run by the Sagmeister family for four generations, the hotel dates to the sixteenth century. Whitewashed gothic arches frame the ceilings of the restaurant and the bar, and tables on the terrace overlook the pedestrian thoroughfare and catch a good portion of the valley’s three hundred days of sun each year. The economic dilemma for the hotel, as Robert Sagmeister describes it, is twofold: They have only twelve rooms and twenty-five beds, and they lack the typical “greenspace” that most hotels tout. After all, they are in a medieval building in the heart of the town, with no means of expansion or adding gardens or a pool.
The solution came somewhat serendipitously, when Robert’s parents, Rudi and Hanni, began to specialize in vegetarian cooking, decades before it was in vogue. Rudi became a vegetarian almost four decades ago, and he brought his newfound dietary interests into the kitchen. Rudi and Hanni took many of the foods traditionally produced by local farmers and blended them with the evolving whole foods trends, creating a fare for their hotel clients that brought in more and more health-minded guests, until they also became a favorite of people suffering from cancer and other health problems. Now Sonja Sagmeister—who married Alexander Agethle and helps market their cheeses before coming to work at her family’s hotel later in the day—oversees the hotel’s health-oriented culinary ventures. Carefully procured grains are kept in a breathable wooden trunk—not in plastic bins—and grains are ground fresh in the restaurant’s stone mill on a daily basis.
While they continue to specialize in vegetarian and whole foods cooking, they do serve meat dishes, but they are keenly focused on the local organic farms that supply their meat, and they work directly with the slaughterhouse and butcher to ensure that the meats they serve are of the highest quality possible. Robert selects the animals he deems appropriate, and he buys the entire animal, directing the butcher to provide the cuts he think will work best for their menu.
These local relationships are nothing new in Mals, but restaurant and hotel owners are refashioning these networks. In the village of Schleis, Hans Agethle manages his family’s hotel and restaurant, Gasthof zum Goldenen Adler. When locals hear that you’re staying at the Goldenen Adler, they almost always exclaim, “Oh, du bist bei Hansele! Es gibt kein besser Essen in Südtirol!” Oh, you’re staying with Hans! There’s no better food in South Tirol! I know simply because I’ve been staying with Hans and his family for more than twenty-five years, and that’s the standard response—and it’s true. I’m now a Stammgast, literally a “rooted guest,” which means more than simply being a regular.
The Stammgast tradition in Europe is a strong one. When you find your perfect vacation spot, with the ideal hosts and outstanding food, you keep coming back, and the relationships with the hotel staff are as important as the food or the surrounding recreational opportunities. So it means something when tourists are giving up their usual vacation spots in other parts of the South Tirol and coming instead to the Upper Vinschgau because of the overwhelming transition to apple plantations. Tourists complain of the trellising and hail nets that block the views, but they become really angry when they are savoring hiking and biking trails, only to find themselves surrounded by the smell of pesticides or, worse yet, caught in a drifting cloud of spray from a nearby tractor.
For now, at least, Schleis offers a reprieve from that kind of spray-cation, and the Agethle family continues to manage their idyllic rural hotel as they have since 1857. With only twelve rooms in a small village, they have to differentiate what they offer. In Hans’s case, the exceptional hospitality and the high quality of the food are the key to the future. There is pressure for hotels in the South Tirol to increase their number of stars—some in the region would like it to be known for the number of four- and five-star hotels it has. In fact, some loans for hotel renovations require that a hotel scale up in its ratings. Scaling up in star status can ruin the essence of what many family hotels have to offer—and the escalating prices quickly shift the clientele . . . and their expectations.
The Agethles’ hotel and restaurant have never had to manufacture authenticity when it comes to local or sustainably produced food: They have long maintained a farm, and any hours Hans can spend on the farm are therapy, although it’s increasingly hard for him to find the time to be in the fields instead of managing the daily operations of the hotel. However, he is keenly attuned to the fact that what happens on the farm either expands or diminishes the offerings that come out of the kitchen. The Agethles have long prided themselves on their fusion of farm and plate, and what they haven’t been able to raise themselves, they’ve been able to procure from their neighbors and their purveyors.
Breakfast always features an extraordinary array of local honeys, cheeses, marmalades, breads, dairy products, and breads. Cheeses and cultured butter make their way down from the high pastures onto the plates, and homemade cured meats appear on special occasions. It’s all a reminder that plate and palate are intricately linked to the farmer’s palette. Artistry in the kitchen is dependent upon the art of farming.
One of the postcard campaigns just before the ballot initiative said it best: “Monoculture is un-culture. Culture requires a landscape with a future . . . Life is valuable.”
The ballot read:
Are you in favor of implementing the following amendment to the articles of the Township of Mals?
The precautionary principle, in order to protect public health, states all measures should be taken that will help prevent harm to the health of humans and animals. The township of Mals has a particular objective of protecting the health of its citizens and guests, maintaining the sustainability of nature and waters, and making it possible for different economic models to coexist within the municipality in a fair and respectful way.
In conformance with these goals, Mals promotes the use of organic, biodegradable crop protection within its municipal boundaries. An ordinance will be issued that describes the details of this provision.
Independently from this provision, the use of highly toxic, toxic, harmful, and polluting chemical-synthetic pesticides is prohibited within its municipal boundaries. The municipal authority is responsible for monitoring the implementation and the compliance of the referendum outcome.
The polling period stretched out as long as the summer days, but even those were drawing to a close. Ulrich tried to minimize the stress with occasional mountain bike rides and hikes with his young family. The elevations provided needed perspective, and when he looked down over the Upper Vinschgau any doubts would dissipate into the thin mountain air.
Days in the office were harried, with calls coming in from Malsers, attorneys, politicians, and the media. Lunch tended to be a time when he could expect some levity, at least when he had the chance to walk up the street, just past Johannes’s apothecary, and grab a bite of bio and regional—organic and local—street food at the Stroossnkuch. Advertised as “Refined Sausage Culture,” the high-end hot dog stand featured products from as many local producers as possible. There still weren’t enough of those producers and distributors, but it took creative enterprises like the Stroossnkuch to catalyze the needed push and pull in the regional economy.
Franz Hofer and Günther Pitscheider thought that Mals needed a different kind of Würstelstand, one that reflected the new food order that seemed to be building in Mals. There were great restaurants in the town—including Pizzeria Remo, which won the coveted “Pizza World Championship”—but Günther and Franz thought that the Stroossnkuch could fill another niche. Dedicated to high-quality food at a reasonable price, the Stroossnkuc
h is simply a retrofitted trailer in a parking lot with a few tables and stools inside and a canopy terrace with picnic tables outside. However, the two business partners are also avid proponents of Wurstkultur, bringing together sausage and the arts, especially music, one of Günther’s many professions.
Ulrich had helped “make room” in town for this new venture—given its out-of-the-ordinary zoning status—and it had become a gathering spot for many of the pesticide-free advocates, formally appointed or not. It was as good a place as any to wait out the news.
The polls closed at noon on September 5, 2014. At 7 PM the results were announced, to the astonishment of almost everyone: 69.22 percent of the electorate had turned out for the vote, and a resounding 75.68 percent voted Ja! for a pesticide-free community, with 24.32 percent voting against the initiative. That three-quarter majority was no fluke. It precisely mirrored the polling done by USGV the year prior.
Mals had made its decision. It seemed like a choice worthy of a democracy.
The supporters of the ballot initiative rejoiced, but they were also careful not to flaunt the victory, realizing that not everyone was happy with the outcome and that, in the end, they all had to live and work together. It was, after all, a small town, like any other . . . except that it had chosen to be different.
The word went out far and wide, with the stunning victory being reported from the major newspapers throughout Europe to the 2014 Annual Congress of the Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica (the European Society for Butterflies and Moths). A jubilant yell went out from the podium: “The Miracle of Malles!” The ordinarily reserved gathering of scientists burst into applause, ecstatic to have one victory in a world where butterfly and moth populations were suffering the ill effects of pesticides, monocultures, and habitat loss.
A Precautionary Tale Page 22