Zonificación

Early theorisations of counterurbanisation held that urban deconcentration and rural population growth were linked to economic development. Counterurbanisation was posited as a process related to postindustrial economic transition. The growth of the service-sector economy dissolved some of the spatio-temporal binds of work, with commuting, remote working and flexible scheduling (including the growth of part-time employment) replacing the site-specific and time-managed models of heavy industry. To earn an urban salary one no longer had to live in the city; put another way, one could occupy a house in the country without living like a peasant. Although I have tried to isolate back-to-the-land migration within the broader counterurbanisation narrative and present it as somewhat unique (Chapter 2), patterns of migration to rural Italy seem to bear some relation to stages of economic development in the home countries of urban to rural migrants. The occupational profiles of back-to-the-landers and the time periods in which this kind of migration has been popular among different nationalities suggest that moving from urban to agricultural lifestyles is a postindustrial phenomenon, as early counterurbanisation theories had claimed, with service sector workers constituting the majority of those relocating to the countryside (Table 6.1).

Table 6.1 – Backgrounds of farmers interviewed

Country of Origin

Male Female Occupations prior to farming Cities of Origin

Italy

Note: Several interviews were conducted with more than one member of the household.

The number of interviewees separated by gender does not imply separate interviews, but accounts for the total number of participants. These numbers relate exclusively to

back-to-the-lander interviews and do not include WWOOFer or AAFN interviews.

All German interviewees discussed a ‘wave’ of immigration to Tuscany in the 1970s when individuals and intentional communities were able to take advantage of cheap agricultural land. One German equestrian technician who has been living in Tuscany since the 1970s said,

‘We were called the Tuscan brigade. Every weekend in cities like Munich and Stuttgart, you would see big caravans of hippies driving out of the city and you knew they were going to Italy.

Sometimes they just stayed for a short while... but many never returned home.’ A Swiss (and primarily Swiss-German) wave occurred simultaneously though it was spread more evenly throughout several northern Italian regions. Belasco (1989) describes American back-to-the-land experiments in the 1960s and 70s often beginning as intentional communities, but rarely surviving as such into the 1980s. Similarly, some predominantly German agrarian communities

continue to exist in Tuscany and Umbria, but many have since been subdivided into individual farms or fully taken over by single families. These early intentional communities often served as the springboard for individual back-to-the-land initiatives. Walter, a former software programmer from Munich now farming in Tuscany, credits his exposure to intentional communities for his later decision to become an independent farmer:

I came for the first time to Italy... by means of friends in 1978, when friends of mine, ex-university colleagues, wanted to found a self-sufficient community in the area of Cortona. My wife and me, we were just curious to see what they intended to do. We originally planned to reactivate the small farm of my wife’s family in the Black Forest, or to buy a small estate in southern Bavaria, but then lots of people moved towards Tuscany and Umbria, and we were curious to have a look… That’s the way it began, in 1978.

Traces of the collective ethos still linger in the farms of several research participants who are technically independent. Giorgio, from the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, arrived in Umbria in 1972 to establish a communal farm with friends, but by the end of the decade he and his wife Margarete were the last remaining members. They have since passed the farm, which is owned by a local church diocese and rented for 300 euros per year, to Sebastian, who moved from Geneva in 2007 to try his hand at farming. Sebastian lives alone but frequently fills the farmhouse with WWOOFers, friends and relatives who all contribute to working the land.

Martina and Stefan, an English woman and her Swiss husband, bought a piece of land in Umbria in 1975 and built a house on the site, one designed to accommodate the frequent short- and long-term guests they expected to work the land with them. They now participate in WWOOF, which simplifies and systematises the volunteering and accommodation, but also promote their farm as an ‘open house’, where people needing simple accommodation at short notice can pay a small fee to stay in the guest quarters or do a day’s work on the farm and stay for free.

Stefan and Martina explain:

S: For the last 30 years, even before WWOOF, we did something where after too many discussions about who drinks the wine and who’s using the gas and not smoking and who’s whatever, we decided to make it a fixed price that more or less just covers the shopping. So that’s been basically going on for the last 30 years. The WWOOF is just an extra thing which is very similar.

M: It used to be more like 300 but now it’s probably about 200 people per year... Of course there are a lot of people who are old friends or friends of friends, or just on holiday, but I think there’s an increasing number of people who are looking for a piece of land. Certainly we have an amazing number of young people coming through, all the time, seriously looking for land.

‘At that time it was still agricultural prices,’ claims Martina, ‘and people were leaving then, and nobody could understand what we were doing.’ The low cost of agricultural land is consistently emphasised by people who arrived before the 1990s. A long growing season and fertile soil are two reasons that the hilly central regions of Tuscany and Umbria have long been popular choices for back-to-the-landers, but the availability of cheap land and abandoned farmhouses, consequences of Italy’s major post-war urban migration, were significant for factors for many.

Framing early back-to-the-land migration in terms of national waves does not provide a complete picture of the situation at any given time, as experiments in communal and self-reliant living were varied in themselves but also undertaken by Italians at home and abroad.

The significance of the early arrivals of Germans and Swiss does demonstrate, however, different perceptions about the possibilities afforded by rural living. Germans and Swiss would have had greater exposure to organic agriculture by the 1970s, as well as alternative farming techniques such as biodynamic production. Walter, who moved to Tuscany from Munich in the early 1980s, says, ‘It was a condition of coming here to have the possibility of organic farming…

I was interested all my life in organic agriculture. It just seemed the normal way of doing things.’ Of course, farming without chemicals had been practiced in Italy for centuries before industrial agriculture had been developed, but the connection between organic farming and the counterculture simply arose later than it did in other parts of Europe and North America. In other words, farming as a social or political project was underdeveloped as a realistic prospect for Italians, who were leaving the countryside en masse. As a predominantly rural country before WWII, post-war Italians were possibly too few generations removed from rural poverty to yearn for a return.

Box. 6.1 – Back-to-the-land profiles: Walter (Tuscany)

Ristonchia is a hamlet which has been almost completely abandoned, about 500m in the hills between Cortona and Castiglion Fiorentino. Once home to over a hundred people, only five households are currently inhabited. The gradual abandonment of Ristonchia both enabled - through cheap land prices - and benefited from Walter’s stewardship of the surrounding land.

Starting small after moving to Tuscany from Munich, Walter initially harvested some local olives and grapes and raised sheep. As more land became available Walter’s agricultural activities expanded to encompass 500 olive trees, a vineyard, chestnut grove, woodland for foraging, as well as chickens, guinea fowl, goats, donkeys and a horse. He also keeps bees and produces his own honey, and maintains a small organic vegetable garden.

Walter is not completely self-sufficient but his production and bartering of basic foodstuffs have hugely reduced his dependency on market-rate products. For instance, goats love to graze on the leaves of olive trees, so the annual pruning of the groves provides ample food for the animals at no cost. Food waste from the house also goes to the goats. Heavier limbs from the olive trees are cut into firewood that will eventually find its way into Walter’s stufa, or stove, which heats not only the kitchen but also the house’s water supply and the radiators in other rooms. Manure, of course, is returned to the land as fertiliser. Nothing is wasted and a use can be found for nearly anything the land offers.

The degree of self-sufficiency that Walter has achieved – while not complete – is more of a relaxed, simplified way of life than the strained asceticism that marks some experiments in self-reliance. Winters can be tough in Ristonchia, where the stone houses are several hundred years old, but Walter’s lifestyle is characterised by slow, quiet contemplation and good food and wine, all achieved through dogged labour but minimal financial cost.