Today is the day to start building our new world, more ecological, sustainable, healthy and happy. We just need to take the first step…
I am an extremely fortunate person. This is what I believe and what is often reiterated to me. I am fortunate because I was born at home, in an aware family, I was born healthy, I drank my mother’s milk, I was not vaccinated, I have always eaten organic and quality food, I lived surrounded by nature, I never watched TV, I did well at school, I travelled a lot, I became an entrepreneur at 21, I purchased a lot of land in the mountains at 24, I live with a splendid partner and I have friends who share my same values…
But the reasons that make me even more fortunate today are that I don’t need doctors and medicines, I don’t know anyone who became seriously ill with Covid19, I live at Autosufficienza Farm, an earthly paradise in Bagno di Romagna, I manage Macrolibrarsi, a company from Cesena amongst the few that, despite the restrictive measures, has always maintained its operations.
I am not a frequenter of clubs, stadiums, cinemas or other crowded public places so my life has not changed all that much in the covid19 era.
I could comfortably and selfishly stay and enjoy my fortune, but living in a healthy society, with solid principles and values, that respects the environment and mankind, is one of my greatest dreams and I have always fought – and want to continue fighting – to achieve it.
Paradise on earth already exists
Paradise today for me already exists: it’s Autosufficienza Farm, the applied ecology centre located in the Romagna Apennines, on the borders of the Casentino Forests Park, a wonderful place, with a breathtaking panorama and partly unspoilt nature. With my family we wanted to create a place of beauty, where people take care of the earth and themselves, and which can become a tangible alternative for a new sustainable lifestyle in harmony with the environment. The farm is the realisation of this desire and I confess that tomorrow I would like to see it expand throughout Romagna and the day after tomorrow throughout the whole Earth.
The tragic experience of Covid-19, and all the theatre that has been built around it, is an excellent opportunity to start again in a different way, to be reborn from the ashes of the epidemic. Many people today, after being confined at home, have begun to rediscover traditional ancestral gestures such as making a vegetable garden, cooking, self-producing, making bread at home, small craft works etc. Confinement, in many, has rekindled the dream of living in the countryside, of returning to looking after animals, cultivating the land and eating what it offers us.
I believe that the lesson to learn from the tragedy that has struck us is this: we must change the way we consume, produce, treat ourselves and relate to each other. The powerful from every part of the world will violently oppose this trend but united and with courage we can become stronger than anyone.
The first step towards the Common Good
The first step to change the world, improve the environment, health and quality of life for everyone is certainly to start self-producing the food we eat and reduce as much as possible the consumption of what cannot be produced in the region. This presupposes the abandonment of the globalised vision of the economy guided by competitiveness, to welcome a new vision guided by the Common Good.
On these foundations in 2009 we founded Autosufficienza Farm acquiring 70 hectares of abandoned land in the mountains, to create a new tangible model of sustainable lifestyle. To design it we adopted permaculture, a union of various branches of science that teaches us how to design human settlements sustainable over time. We adopted the 3 ethics of permaculture: care for the earth, care for people and sharing the surplus. In these 10 years we have renovated and created new structures in natural building, heated with wood from our forests, we have built aqueducts with spring water, terraces, contour ditches and lakes, vegetable gardens and orchards.
We cultivate aromatic herbs, we produce honey and eggs from happy chickens. In a more extensive way we have fields dedicated to pulses and cereals such as ancient grains. Defining our crops as organic is reductive, because they are worth much more. Every weekend we invite experts and organise practical courses on self-production, health, yoga and spirituality to approach life holistically.
Perhaps what differentiates us most compared to many other projects is precisely the holistic approach, to biodiversity and multifunctionality. As much as possible, we try to take the best care of every aspect of life. Autosufficienza Farm’s project has required significant investments. Its exact replication is certainly accessible to few – and perhaps would also make little sense – but its spirit instead can be replicated even in small projects, perhaps taking inspiration from the individual pieces that make up the picture.
Today, as my dear friend Daniel Tarozzi of Italia che Cambia always repeats, the examples of people who have decided to live differently from the stereotypes proposed to us by the mainstream media are in their millions. The information to implement change is easily available. The motivations have never been so great.
All that remains is to arm ourselves with goodwill and, as our grandparents did after the war, start building the new world.
Written by Francesco Rosso.
