From landscape saving agriculture to agriculture-saving landscape. A Wine Road project

The agricultural practice is closely connected with territorial integrity protection and with landscape’s beauty and health. For decades, European and national policies have allocated funds for the protection of agricultural landscapes and the recovery of uncultivated lands. Yet, for decades, Italian land has been constantly left fallow, not to mention the crisis of small and widespread agricultural production and the farmers going extinct. As opposed to Carlo Petrini’s best hopes, according to whom farmers will save the world (Carlo Petrini, Terra Madre), agricultural land is continuously being lost, decomposing the relief in geometric elements, materializing the contour lines. The story is set on a Mediterranean island characterised by stone architecture, enduring, protective, that imposes within the natural environment, perfecting it for dwelling purposes, according to the physical needs of local residents and the associated symbolic aspirations. The story is about a centuries-old work of man over nature in order to transform it, by interpreting and harmonically balancing its rhythms, its conditions. Currently, this balance is disrupted: farmers have abandoned their lands, the majority of dry stone walls – representing the supporting frame of this landscape – are also subjected to abandonment and consequent collapse. In the past 60 years, the hillsides of Pantelleria, that our ancestors had endeavoured to render suitable for farming, have been abandoned too. New plantations occupy the few plains and dilate the space of a changing landscape, as regards proportions and shapes. The farming land has been abandoned, partly offset by urbanization and partly owing to reforestation. If agriculture is no longer able to provide the typical Mediterranean landscape’s harmonic balance, can we entrust landscape (so far mere common law to be protected) with the salvific role of our identity? The project here presented leverages the growing interest in environmental and landscape issues that targets a certain kind of tourism (eco-tourism, gastronomic tourism, green tourism) endeavouring to promote it on the island. This is implemented by outlining an educational course that provides a systemic mapping of the various hydrogeological, cultural, physical and morphological characteristics of the territory. In addition to its educational purpose, the new course serves as an instrument for connecting and promoting local activities, linking all farms in the area with the help of the Administration, pursuing the common goal of rendering future investments on the territory more realistic. The course, to be implemented with different speeds depending on specific landscape features, sets out to rediscover the close ties between territory and economy, landscape and identity, climate and crops, including stone, water harvesting and erosion control.