“GREENDEN: A TECH-PLATFORM FOR FARMERS AND A SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM”

Efficiency, soil-fertility, rediscovery of local cultures and small businesses, high-quality food and fair distribution of it. Are these the features of a sustainable agro-food system? Yes… and all this is now possible! Thanks to the technological advancement in the collection, analysis and use of data. It is now something real thanks to the Italian start-up Greenden and its tech-platform (an app for any smartphone) which brings together all the operators of the food supply chain, from the farmer to the consumer. ‘Greenden’ is a guaranty for high-quality and local food. Marco Piemonte, CEO of Greenden told us more about this project.

The Agri-Village of Vicofertile_Case Study_n°3 

Made by Dario Ruggiero (Founder and Coordinator of the web-site www.lteconomy.it/en), with the collaboration of Giovanni Leoni (ownwr of the farm Leoni and creator of the concept of Agri-village) - May 2015

 

 

How to build and nurture really sustainable communities? This is the question, Giovanni Leoni, owner of the farm Leoni (based on Parma, Italy), is trying to answer with his innovative socio-agricultural project: the agri-village. But before delving into the description of the project, let me start with a statement expressed by ‘Charles Eisenstein,’[1] in ‘Resurgence & Ecologist, may/June 2014 No.284,’ (an article that I strongly recommend all those people who are looking for an answer to the economic, social and ecological crisis we are experiencing today):

 

‘Climate Change is a double-edged sword’

 

 

People (like me) who live in a urban context, who eat products found on supermarkets’ shelves or bought from small retailers, know very little about agricultural practices and the techniques used to realize these products. Industrial farming (with its high productivity) is almost totally dependent on the use of external industrial sources (from machinery to chemicals like fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and antifungals). It is true, this model has brought an increase in the productivity of crops (especially in terms of the ratio output / Human Resources); but, on the other hand, an overuse of industrial farming’s techniques is bringing soil degradation and a decrease in the quality of the products we eat.

What a “native seed” is? How does it benefit our health and the health of our lands? Before I met Giuseppe Li Rosi, I had never imagined that there are so many varieties of wheat and that the characteristics of these varieties are closely related to the features of the places where they have been traditionally grown. I did not know that the quality of "gluten" (the matter that allows you to turn the flour into pasta, bread and so on) varies from wheat to wheat and that the gluten of "ancient wheat" (the wheat traditionally grown in a given territory) is far more digestible than the gluten of "modern wheat" (the one used to produce pasta and bread we usually find on supermarket shelves). Finally, I was completely unaware of the fact that cultivating non-native wheat in a certain land can seriously damage the fertility of the soil: in order to make the soil suitable for that non-native wheat we need to make a massive use of chemicals in terms of fertilizers and pesticides.