Variables y operacionalización

The three formal networks analysed in detail in this research, Slow Food, WWOOF and APE, all promote some function of knowledge and skill transmission between farmers. Embedded in their capacity to do so is a recognition that traditional structures for mentoring, namely family and community, have been weakened by a depopulated and mechanised countryside. The kind of farming that attracts back-to-the-landers tends to be labour-intensive and focused on quality, in contrast to the industrialised farming reflected in the capitalistic and technocratic varieties of agro-science. It can be a consciously old-fashioned approach, requiring what Stuiver (2007) calls ‘retro innovation’ to align a preference for older practices with contemporary and future demands. Stakeholders, which can include connected networks of non-farmers such as consumers, academics and NGOs, ‘gather around the problematisation of the present food regime and embrace old knowledge as a way forward.’ (Stuiver, 2007: 163) This section considers how values are wedded to skill and knowledge in the Slow Food, WWOOF and APE networks, and what role these groups play in their dissemination. By extension, this line of inquiry also asks how back-to-the-land migration is enabled and sustained by the existence of these networks.

7.5.1. APE

The Associazione per Esperienze di Autoproduzione e Collaborazione (APE) provides a rich case study in how local knowledge is disseminated among back-to-the-landers in an organised

network. Based in the vicinity of Cortona, Tuscany, it began as a way of meeting particular needs that were, in the opinions of the founding members, being addressed either too disparately by larger organisations or not at all. Walter, a signatory to the founding statute, describes it as a coalescence of interests among already acquainted farmers. Members of APE have variously been involved with WWOOF, farmers’ markets, the biodiversity and heritage seed variety organisation Seedsavers, the small farmers’ network Associazione di Solidarietà per la Campagna Italiana (ASCI) and Coldiretti, the national farmers’ union. Remarking that

‘...there is really no coordination between different farmers’ movements’, Walter and the other founders sought to pool the provisions offered by unrelated national organisations into a self-contained local network of mutual support.

There are eight farms that regularly participate in APE activities and about 10 non-farmers who attend events regularly and communicate with the group. Individual events such as harvest feasts (Section 8.2.2) are likely to attract many more participants, but for purposes of understanding the organisation’s role in circulating skill and knowledge it is sufficient to limit discussion here to the activities of the farms at the core of its membership. Among these practices is the formalised sharing of manual capabilities, machinery resources and technical knowledge. Members of the group meet collectively on most Wednesdays from spring through autumn to perform the most resource-intensive tasks on alternating APE farms. There is no expectation that all members will attend every ‘work party’ but as a trial system for pooling labour, tools and knowledge for maximum mutual benefit, the participating farms have been consistent in their commitment. Some of the tasks performed collectively by the work parties include harvesting chestnuts from the woodland on Walter’s property, weed-clearing in the semi-abandoned fields of Nicla’s farm, tree pruning on all farms and assistance with grape, grain and olive harvests.

In late February, 2010 I participated in two APE work parties in Tuscany, the first at the Cortona farm of Louise, an English back-to-the-lander from Gloucester, and the second at Nicla’s property near Montepulciano. On both days APE members Louise, Nicla, Walter and Marino, all back-to-the-landers, were present. Pruning olive trees was the main job at both locations and the one that commanded most of the attention of the farmers. Walter and

Marino each brought a gas-powered pruning saw while all the others came with a supply of roncole, or machete-like curved blades designed for shaving thin twigs from branches and logs.

In this pocket of Tuscany there is considerable cross-pollination between WWOOF and APE.

Nicla, for example, was invited to join APE after Walter, a regional coordinator for WWOOF, came to inspect her farm. At each work party there were three WWOOFers, including myself, all representing different host farms which were also affiliated to APE.

On both occasions the WWOOFers were given several small, relatively easy but nonetheless essential jobs to do while the farmers debated the best methods for pruning individual olive trees. While the WWOOFers did some weeding and bramble clearing at each farm, our primary tasks involved clearing and managing the arboreal debris from the olive groves. Pruning should ideally maximise the penetration of sunlight to a tree’s foliage, so dense, overly leafy branches that crowd out others are thinned at least every two years. Dead and dying branches, visible to the trained eye, are also trimmed away. Theories on olive pruning emphasise evenly channelled air circulation through the foliage, an idea reflected in the smooth, rounded ‘wine goblet’ appearance of well-maintained trees. These key principles are taken into consideration any time an incision is made, meaning that lengthy deliberations sometimes transpire before any action is taken. On the farms, thick branches that could be used for firewood were shorn of their extending twigs and cut into portable logs. At Louise’s farm, thin, leafy branches were reserved for feeding her goats. Goats relish masticating on olive leaves, explained Walter, and freshly cut branches provide a free source of food for the animals.

At both farms Walter and Marino were able to continue some of the pruning work while Louise and Nicla prepared lunch for the group. For the most part the food was entirely organic and made with ingredients grown on site or bartered with neighbouring farmers. Over lunch, the APE members continued to discuss pruning techniques, schedules for completing the groves and plans for the following week’s work party. After lunch at Louise’s farm several of us assisted in transplanting a bay laurel to a new location where the shade it cast would minimise impacts on other plants. Again, this was the subject of considerable debate before any actual work was performed. Following that task, Marino spent about half an hour guiding the whole group around the farm to identify and forage wild edible herbs and grasses. My field journal remarks

that ‘many could easily have been mistaken for inedible weeds. We tried several and they were good, particularly the ones growing out of the stone walls.’ Bags of the herbs were collected by each of the farmers and taken home to be used in salads that night.

The work parties described are an impressionistic rather than comprehensive depiction of APE’s praxis. The mentoring, knowledge circulation, sociality and economic efficiency promoted by the work parties are also present in the group’s other activities, often designed to extend these priorities toward non-farmers. Section 5.1, for example, describes Walter’s project in which he invites city dwellers to participate in the selection, slaughter and butchery of a chicken that he has raised but the ‘customer’ will keep. This process, he claims, imparts skill, knowledge and an ethical foundation for evaluating animal welfare. The project is also an innovative response to the limited market opportunities accessible to small farmers whose products may not conform to certain regulatory protocols or bear standard organic certification (see Chapter 8). Walter knows that the chickens must be slaughtered and that he must find a market for them. His project applies the principles of APE toward necessary market exchange, thus redefining the character of that exchange as less instrumentalist (cf. Hinrichs, 2000) or

‘capitalocentric’ (cf. Gibson-Graham, 2003; 2008).

7.5.2. WWOOF

Several interviewees reported, on and off the record, that the potential for WWOOF to act as a medium for communicating practical farming knowledge is under-utilised. WWOOF hosts (apart from the most remote) in Piedmont, Tuscany, Umbria and Emilia-Romagna often live within close proximity of one another. Partly this is because they tend to concentrate in relatively marginal land, away from the industrial monoculture farms that place large distances between homes in agricultural regions. According to Walter, a regional WWOOF coordinator for the Arrezzo area of Tuscany, there are nearly 10 WWOOF farms between Castiglion Fiorentino and Cortona, a distance that could be traversed on foot in a matter of hours. Many WWOOF hosts know each other personally, either independently of WWOOF or as a result of membership. In this context dialogues about farming often arise and a strong potential exists to utilise such

connections. On a formal basis, however, the idea of WWOOF as a platform for exchanging ideas, rather than simply labour, remains under-developed:

We tried a forum and it didn’t really work. But there have been things where somebody’s looking for a certain kind of grain, and I send out a message to all the hosts in their area… Or sometimes you’re looking to share a mill… These sorts of things. There’s not a lot of that but it would be a really good thing to do more of.

(WWOOF official, Tuscany)

I think you could probably use it more... The WWOOF farms that we have nearby here are doing WWOOF because we did WWOOF in the beginning. They followed the example that they saw on our farm. There is an exchange, of course, with these farms, and maybe some collaboration… The one down here brings us apples and we make apple juice that he gives to guests, things like this… But it’s not because of WWOOF, it’s because we knew each other before WWOOF.

(Greta, Emilia-Romagna)

The lack of uptake in using WWOOF as a conduit for farming knowledge is attributed primarily to other organisations fulfilling that role. Elisa and Romano, for example, access some technical expertise of medicinal herb production through a dedicated national producers’

association, Federazione Italiana Produttori Pianti Officinali (FIPPO). However, they have met other local WWOOF hosts through FIPPO, leading to friendly relationships and regular communication. They claim to have learned from these other farms, with Elisa commenting that ‘[WWOOF membership] is really useful for experience because we have an exchange of ideas and suggestions.’ One of the WWOOF officials has been proactive in making WWOOF a visible member of Semi Rurali, an umbrella group of organisations concerned with sustainable farming and artisanal food production. This affiliation, it is hoped, will strengthen WWOOF’s potential for connecting farmers and possibly steering collective energy toward the more overtly political aims of Semi Rurali. Presently, however, interaction between WWOOF farms remains fairly casual and unorganised, an opportunity that can be electively seized but is often not. As Walter remarks:

It’s a way of connecting. Maybe it’s not the easiest way, but it’s one of a lot of networks. There are other networks – the Seedsavers network, or Small Farmers’

Association or others. And everybody now has his name on a mailing list, and if you are connected to three or four mailing lists, you are connected to hundreds of interested farmers all over Italy. So if you need information you have a good chance of getting it.

Although the WWOOF network is reported as being under-utilised as a platform for knowledge exchange among established farmers, it plays a dynamic role in imparting skills and experience to aspiring farmers, making a considerable contribution to the viability of back-to-the-land lifestyles. According to the prescribed formula for WWOOF participation, hosts act as teachers, giving verbal instructions to be followed and physical demonstrations to be mimicked. Through repetition and practice, a repertoire of skills should ideally become instilled in the volunteers so that analytical judgments can be exercised toward productive, cost-effective and sustainable farming. Karen, a WWOOF host in Umbria, claims that she always refers to her volunteers as ‘apprentices’ rather than ‘workers’ and selectively chooses WWOOFers on the basis of stated experience or interest in the organic horticulture in which she specialises.

‘Ideally,’ says one WWOOF Italia official, ‘it’s the WWOOFer and the host working on one side, collaborating on a project together. It’s not “How many hours did I do?” or anything like that.

That’s why we’re always pushing this collaboration – working together to do a project with a host.’

The notion that WWOOF can serve as an effective apprenticeship comes through strongly in the regrets of back-to-the-landers who began farming with little practical experience. Although some were able to gain direct agricultural experience through other means, several interviewees remarked that they would have benefitted from working for at least a year or more as a volunteer before embarking on their own back-to-the-land projects. ‘If we had known about WWOOF before,’ says Elisa, ‘we would have done it just to get some experience, just to see what farming is. When we began it was a totally new thing for us.’ Romano continues: ‘We started because we had an idea, so we followed this idea for a long time and we were focused on it for many years. So I think if you want to do it just to do something different it doesn’t really work. You should have the right direction to follow.’ Ursula, a German back-to-the-lander in Tuscany, had done a year’s apprenticeship in Germany many years before buying her farm in Italy but feels that she did not fully take advantage of the

opportunity. Had she known that she would eventually become a farmer, her training as an apprentice could have been valuable in terms of practical experience:

The practical knowledge [from her apprenticeship]… it’s not there. But I regretted that later. Afterwards you’re always more wise. I could have learned a lot. ... it’s my own fault, because I did not ask the [right] questions. I had no idea what to ask. I should have done better, been more aware.

In statements about WWOOF’s value as an apprenticeship facility, interviewees frequently emphasised that the most valuable knowledge cannot be attained through short stays at multiple farms. Rather, the most effective preparatory approach would involve remaining at a single location for a year or more. This way an aspiring farmer can gain experience of working to seasonal demands and participating in full cycles of plant and animal life. Put differently, short farmstays can habituate a WWOOFer in the staccato rhythms of daily chores but not the overarching time signature that determines a farm’s seasonal or annual demands.

I think as a WWOOFer if you’re staying a short amount of time it’s a little harder to understand the whole structure of how things work and why we do things. I would want to do a little bit of formal studying and definitely at least a year WWOOFing, and maybe trying to stay in one place where I can see the whole process...

[WWOOFing] has kind of been an inspiration to me and I’ve learned a lot in terms of little bits of knowledge, but not in a comprehensive sense because I haven’t been in one place long enough.

(Madeleine, WWOOFer, Emilia-Romagna)

I remember the many WWOOFers that have passed through here, there were always a few that were interested to become farmers and I always told them, ‘Spend at least two years somewhere doing farming.’ For me, I appreciate what I learned but I always thought one year was too short. If you stay one year on a farm to learn, you learn certain manual things, like you know how to, let’s say, pick carrots for

example, but you don’t have the whole knowledge – when to feed them, how to feed them properly… You learn a lot in one year but not enough to start your own farm.

(Greta, Emilia-Romagna)

People who are interested in the agricultural process… They need to work at a farm that can really teach, and stay probably at least six months of the year.

(Roberto, Umbria)

Wolfgang worked in Tanzania and Malawi for several years before settling in Italy. His experience of those projects’ shortcomings echoes the view of other WWOOF hosts regarding their own farms:

To learn the local conditions, it takes at least one year. You have to have seen at least one cycle of the year. Many of these projects, the time they give you is too short to really know anything, to do it. The next one is coming and you’ve achieved nothing. Time is over or the project is ending… There are so many factors limiting your productivity to do something useful.

Some WWOOF hosts are inclined to take on volunteers for long periods of time, but stays of less than a month tend to be the norm in most arrangements. Among the 91 respondents to the questionnaire for WWOOF volunteers, none had stayed on a single farm for more than six months, with 72% listing their maximum time in one place as less than a month. This fact flags up a significant tension currently afflicting WWOOF: as the popularity of WWOOFing has increased, the demographic profile of volunteers has shifted from apprentice farmers to itinerant young people seeking a cheap means of international travel. Bridget, a host in Tuscany, remarks that this presents a major contrast from the early days of WWOOF Italia:

We used to get travellers and now we get tourists. And I prefer travellers... I had some a few weeks ago and it was such a relief to see them arrive in their van, and it was just like the old days. They said, ‘Hi, we’re just travelling around… What do you want done?’ And it was great. I used to get a lot of people like that. There were a lot less farms, but we used to see more of that. And [now] it’s these kids who just don’t know what to do on their gap year or whatever, and they get financial support from their parents and come over to hang out on organic farms… It’s not really to our advantage if we really want their help.

In spite of these sometimes negative reflections, one WWOOF official sees in the less enthusiastic novices an opportunity to change their attitudes. Knowing that not every volunteer will be a prospective farmer, ‘you also have to see the point of view that these young kids who come over, you can try to turn them around, make them think about what it’s all about.’

These WWOOFers, she argues, ‘are actually the kind of people we want to get to as well... I do feel that when they go away that I’ve changed something and hopefully they’ll think about it.’

This hope is justified, she believes, on the basis of having hosted ‘hundreds’ of WWOOFers and seen many of them develop more knowledge, enthusiasm and commitment than they carried upon arrival at her farm. Klara, a WWOOFer who had been working at a farm in Emilia-Romagna for several months, made a similar remark in reference to a first-time WWOOFer

This hope is justified, she believes, on the basis of having hosted ‘hundreds’ of WWOOFers and seen many of them develop more knowledge, enthusiasm and commitment than they carried upon arrival at her farm. Klara, a WWOOFer who had been working at a farm in Emilia-Romagna for several months, made a similar remark in reference to a first-time WWOOFer