Several weeks later Mals would win the prestigious European Village Renewal Award in a ceremony in Switzerland, and receive a letter of support from environmental activist Vandana Shiva, yet another winner of the Right Livelihood Award—the “Alternative” Nobel Prize—and probably the world’s most recognized leader in the fight against pesticides and genetically engineered crops.
The international acclaim couldn’t have been more deserved. It also made it much harder for Big Apple and the politicians to dismiss the Malsers as “green crazies.” Mals had set a precedent that went well beyond the South Tirol. The good news and the bad news was that Mals was now even more of a threat. Things would not get easier.
According to the new rules for a binding initiative in Mals, any ballot initiative approved by the citizens was to be implemented within six months. However, some members of the Mals Municipal Council were not in favor of the initiative and refused to attend the council meeting in December in which the issue was to be taken up. Without a quorum, the issue was tabled.
At the same time, a group of plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the mayor (as the representative of the municipality), the Mals Voting Commission, and the spokesperson for the Advocacy Committee. They were all required to appear in court in Bozen in January. The plaintiffs had accepted the call from the South Tirolean Farmers’ Association, the SBB, to take on the supporters of the initiative, with the SBB footing any necessary legal bills. Perhaps someone forgot that some of the members of the SBB were organic farmers.
The municipal council was slated to take up the ballot initiative again in January but failed to address the issue one more time. New elections for town officials were slated for May, so the advocates of the pesticide-free initiative rallied supporters to run for the open seats on the council. Ulrich was also up for reelection, and all of South Tirol was keenly interested in his fate, given his support of the ballot initiative.
As it turned out, supporters of the pesticide-free initiative won the majority of the seats, virtually assuring passage of the necessary amendments to the town’s statutes and preparing the way for the creation of the associated ordinance that would turn the will of the people into regulations. The biggest victory, however, was Ulrich’s: He won 75 percent of the popular vote, the largest win of any mayoral election in the South Tirol. It was a mandate beyond reproach.
Finally, in July, the ballot initiative was officially adopted in the town statutes, and town officials began working with expert attorneys to determine the best path forward with the ordinance. The ballot initiative was under attack, so it was obvious that the ordinance would also need to be able to withstand the inevitable litigation that was to follow.
It wouldn’t be until almost eight months later, in March 2016, that the new ordinance would be released. Determining how to transform the ballot initiative into an ordinance that could withstand the legal firepower directed its way proved to be extremely challenging. In the end, and unexpectedly, the municipal council voted unanimously in favor of the ordinance.
In examining all of the relevant precedents they could find and trying to predict possible points of legal vulnerability, Ulrich, the attorneys, town officials, and advocates came to a challenging conclusion: An outright ban was legal suicide. It could and would be contested immediately in court, meaning that no ordinance would be in effect while it was in litigation. The legal stalling would not only allow the continued expansion of conventionally managed orchards but also do nothing to solve the immediate and very real problems of pesticide drift. So the Malsers chose another angle—less pure, in a sense, but still within the spirit of the ballot initiative.
It was left to Ulrich to present the new ordinance to the town. He knew it would come as a disappointment since it wasn’t a pure ban on all pesticides, but he had faith that his fellow Malsers, with all of the cunning and creativity that they’d displayed for so long, would understand the legal cat-and-mouse game they were playing and appreciate the calculus of their unanticipated approach.
A meeting was called in the town hall at the end of March. The familiar faces of the campaign made their way in, gathering in small groups along the walls and in the back of the room to compare thoughts on what would be presented. Ulrich stood in front of the seated audience and methodically explained the necessity of a compromise. There would be no outright ban on all synthetic pesticides.
The air left the room with the audience’s collective gasp. However, Ulrich continued, there was a virtual ban provided by the strict nature of the stringent new buffer requirements. Although the new buffers were still insufficient for doing the impossible—containing drift—they made pesticide spraying impractical in a town with such small and fragmented agricultural fields.
Ulrich laid out the three primary components the ordinance:
1.The two most toxic classes (known as T+ and T) of synthetic pesticides would be banned.
2.Given the demonstrated issues of drift in the Upper Vinschgau due to its windy conditions, a minimum 50-meter (164-foot) buffer would be required between the outer edge of a spray zone of other synthetic pesticides and any adjacent properties. Due to the small parcel sizes of the valley, this buffer created a de facto ban of these other synthetic pesticides.
3.Organic agriculture would be supported and advanced in the town. The town’s dining facilities would be supplied with organic products, beginning with the kindergartens and progressing toward the other school facilities. Organic agriculture, including transition programs, would be financially supported.
Ulrich finished his presentation and looked at the audience. Expressions around the room varied. Some heads were nodding ever so slightly, acknowledging the wisdom of the approach. Other faces seemed cast in stone, not shifting in expression, while a few heads shook in subtle disagreement or disappointment. Everyone knew, however, that Ulrich didn’t shy away from controversy or shirk his responsibility to the people who’d reelected him by such a wide margin.
Just a few weeks earlier, in February, nearly five hundred people had attended a lecture in Mals by Hans Rudolf Herren, who had followed up his letter of support with a visit to the town. The title of his talk: Weiter wie bisher ist kein Option, Continuing as Before Is Not an Option. That theme held true. The ordinance was a cunning compromise, and it was a game changer in a world of giants. At the end of the day, aim mattered more than the size of the stone.
Political farce would be best if it were always on stage or in print. At the very least, it might be easier to believe than when it shows up in real life.
Driven by 140 plaintiffs from Mals and perhaps other pressures or predilections, a provincial court judge in Bozen ruled in May 2016 that the ballot initiative was invalid. According to the judge, the question itself was inadmissible: Pesticide usage is under the purview of provincial, national, and EU jurisdiction. Furthermore, the referendum question should not have been posed by a group of citizens—in other words, the Advocacy Committee.
Therefore, the judge ruled, the initiative and all of the actions surrounding it were null and void. The ordinance, however, was created separately and remained valid.
While the announcement was an emotional blow at first, it was no surprise. Bureaucrats, lobbyists, and plaintiffs had been trying to sabotage the referendum process before it took place and then nullify the outcome after the vote. In these kinds of extended legal battles in which the powers that be hold on to the status quo like a scepter, to be sanguine is to be sane. Koen Hertoge, from his perspective as a Mals citizen and the cofounder of PAN-Italia, was essentially nonplussed: “It was totally irrelevant if the referendum was ‘cancelled’ or ‘destroyed’ by the judge in Bozen. For the citizens of Mals, we still have, and we will always have, the result of the referendum. And furthermore, the result of the referendum helped the Municipal Council to make their qualified decision to further implement the local rules and legislation.”
A town
meeting was called several days later in the Kulturhaus, and the room was filled from front to back. Johannes introduced and moderated the meeting before Ulrich took the floor and reassured the crowd that the judgment certainly flew in the face of the democratic processes that advanced the ballot initiative and the resounding will of the majority of Malsers. Nonetheless, the ordinance was still intact, and he and other town officials would continue to work diligently on implementing its various facets. Of course, other legal challenges would come, but the key was to continue moving forward, setting an example for the rest of the world while simultaneously garnering support from around the globe to expose the farce and to make it clear, as Ulrich had reiterated throughout the process, that “the people are the sovereign.”
But the people of Mals were also tired. They had run the gauntlet of an initiation they’d never expected or asked for. It was time for the Malsers to shift from a defensive holding action to a strategic realignment of resources to building the future they wanted. In that vein, members of the community began gathering around the idea of a Bürgergenossenschaft Obervinschgau (BGO),1 a Citizens’ Cooperative of the Upper Vinschgau. Soon they were developing an investment model to promote economic development based on the natural resources, traditions, and competitive advantages of the region, without depleting or tainting the environment. The group is in its early stages of development, but in the search for a sustainable future, its backers want to trade the watchwords of efficiency, competition, and consumption strategies for resilience, cooperation, and diversity. The goal is to build upon the people and the resources of the region in order to strengthen the local economy and social fabric by serving as a hub, providing advice, promoting networks, supporting initiatives, and implementing the BGO’s own ideas and services that promote sustainable development.
While the BGO finds its footing with staffing, a location, and additional funding, other homegrown initiatives are already in play. Martina decided to dedicate what time and energy she could muster, while also trying to raise two small children, toward the development of a distribution cooperative specializing in organic vegetables and other products related to fine food. In concert (literally sometimes) with musician-turned-sausage-culture-meister Günther Pitscheider from the Stroosnkuch, she and others have been hard at work building Vinterra, a social cooperative that functions as an economically viable distribution business. The goal of Vinterra is to help grow an economy focused on providing restaurants and shops with organic, local, and socially minded products.
When the issues of market push and pull are still being sorted out, the best business model for the entity in the middle—the distributor—is not simple to determine. And scale matters. If there isn’t sufficient pull from enough consumers or adequate push from the producers, the tug-of-war ends in a draw, with both sides losing. Cooperatives work: Big Apple proved that. Now the question is whether these new cooperatives can grow based on ecological and social principles and not just on their ability to win markets for farmers and provide massive supplies of product far beyond local boundaries.
As a Querdenker among Querdenkers, Alexander Agethle has taken yet another route. He sees the future from a slightly different angle: His goal is to use his creative business model and hard-earned infrastructure to incubate other farmers and businesses. “We try to help young businesspeople in the realization of their ideas, to create a diversity not just in agriculture but also in the artisanal and tourism realms. That means we create a self-sustaining region and not a region that produces apples or milk for some global market.”
For Alexander, it’s not all about the money: “It’s about creating a mood for people to realize their ideas, for cooperatives to realize their ideas, for associations to realize their ideas, and lastly, it’s the humans in a place who give a region a new drive, who give a region its character, which in turn shapes the region.”
Anja and Georg Theiner are a young farming couple working hard to find a way to make a living from a farm at 4,593 feet (1,400 m) near the village of Matsch. If the altitude isn’t enough of a challenge, the steep slopes on which the farm sits are. Even sitting at the picnic table among their organic gardens, a case of vertigo seems to be an ever-present possibility. Georg obviously suffers from no such malady. Having grown up on the Lechtlhof, as its been known for centuries, he leaps across pastures in pursuit of errant sheep with grace equal to theirs, barely breaking a sweat as he brings them across the pastures, perpendicular to the slope, ready for their next milking. It’s a bit of a show for the guests staying in their two apartments on the farm, if they’ve torn themselves away from the view of Mals spread out below the balconies of their rented rooms.
The Lechtlhof’s praises have been sung in poetry and prose throughout the Tirol for several hundred years. Touted as one of the most beautiful farms in all the land, it has lost none of stunning charm since then, and Anja, Georg, and their young son only add to it. Despite its beauty, however, the Lechtlhof faces the challenges of so many true mountain farms that cling with time-tested talons to the precipitous mountainsides of the region. Georg had struggled with the future of the farm he inherited—much of it in neglect in part due to the tragedy of his mother dying at a young age and leaving a family missing the guidance of that second set of vital hands and eyes to keep the farm in prime shape. Fortunately he met Anja, who was both experienced and highly educated in farming thanks to her Austrian upbringing. Together they formed a vision of a diversified income stream, with organic vegetables, a small agritourism venture with their apartments, and sheep cheese.
It is there that their relationship with Alexander proved critical. He offered to help transform their dream of raising dairy sheep—perhaps the best-adapted livestock for their high-altitude farm—into a reality. He offered to mentor them in high-quality milk production and to buy and help market their cheese. In doing so, he diversified his offerings and clientele while providing them with an immediate market, without having to set up an expensive cheesemaking facility—something they couldn’t afford and, as it turned out, didn’t need to replicate. Anja laughed as she explained her vision of the perfect push-and-pull scenario: “If this symbiosis with the consumer and producer or farmer would work perfectly, we probably wouldn’t need politics.”
Anja’s point was critical. Ultimately, the story of Mals isn’t so much about a referendum that was a global first or even the cunning ordinances that codify a townwide sentiment into legal protections for the most basic of human rights. The holding actions all mattered, but the holding power of it all is based in the relationships and the networks that sustain. The long-term health and the vitality of Mals are dependent upon the townspeople spinning gossamer threads and connecting anchor point to anchor point before daring to traverse the intimidatingly open spaces between.
In the year since that judgment, the political challenges within the South Tirol haven’t subsided, and they probably won’t. The Malsers set a precedent that exposes the dangers of self-interests gone awry, while also creating a veritable handbook for citizen-based activism and direct democracy. By trying to avoid a head-on collision with conventional agriculture, they unveiled a farce that is best left to the arts and not allowed to unfold in real life.
In the meantime, they’ve set an example for communities across the world. The EU has created a “Pesticide-Free Villages” initiative, modeled in large part on the Mals campaign. When pesticide policy is discussed in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and now the United States, Mals isn’t just a model—it’s a story, an evolving story of a small community that took on forces far bigger, won, and is still winning. When the Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica, the European butterfly and moth scientists, looked for a location to hold their annual congress in fall 2016, it only made sense to meet in that town of hope they’d heard about and applauded in 2014. They decided to hold their conference at Marienberg Abbey, from which they had a perfect view of “the Miracle of Mals.”
A few months later, in spring 2017, the Umweltinstitut München, the Environmental Institute of Munich, started an online petition to the governor of South Tirol, Arno Kompatscher. Conceived as a display of solidarity for a town under duress from its own provincial officials, the initiative quickly rallied more than twenty thousand signatures stating not only their support for the Malsers but also a reticence to travel to the South Tirol if the government did not address the massive pesticide use in the region. The initiative culminated in a visit to Mals by about seventy supporters from the Munich area who joined a band of Malsers for a walk and a human chain across the coveted Mals Heath, before marching into the flag-draped town for a feast of traditional Vinschgau foods.
A few weeks later, in the auspicious days of early May when the “spray of apple blossoms” confounds the emotions of any diehard pesticide activist, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) of Europe held its annual general assembly in Mals. Leaders of the activist community came from all over Europe to stay in Hotel Greif in the heart of the town, where they learned the story of a pesticide-free Mals from the locals and had a firsthand glimpse into the working landscape and food traditions.
I was fortunate enough to join the PAN-Europe delegates as they celebrated their thirty years of work as an organization and strategized their future endeavors. Meeting in Mals gave additional meaning to their work simply by posing the stark contrast of choices in Mals and elsewhere. Delegates alternated between local and organic dishes at the Hotel Greif, and less palatable recollections of the challenges faced by the Malsers.
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