Natural agriculture can save the world
From the obvious disasters of agribusiness to the extraordinary productivity of people and environmentally friendly little farms
There are hundreds of ways of doing agriculture and many different facets, but generally speaking we can divide agriculture into two broad categories. The first category is industrial agriculture, characterized by a constant research to replace the natural systems that regulate the earth’s cycles with artificial systems that, in theory, should help achieving better results for humans. The second category, which could be defined as natural agriculture, seeks to understand the cycles of the earth more fully in order to imitate and benefit from them. It is an agriculture that requires much more knowledge and manual labour and is oriented towards self-sufficiency and territoriality.
The right tools for market gardens and no-till agriculture
As we know, there are many different ways to do agriculture and cultivate, but not all of them are respectful of nature and biodiversity. On the other hand, there are methods that not only don’t impact the environment negatively, but even promote soil fertility, biodiversity and improve the quality of the entire ecosystem in the face of greater productivity and lower costs. An example is represented by market gardens and no-till agriculture.
Hurry up
Let’s become the solutions to our problems!
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. – HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What will my region be like in 2025?
A green, flowery and unpolluted Eden where people work less and live better: here’s how to make it happen.
Romagna, September 21st 2025
Dear Friends, this year I decided to spend my usual month of travel in Romagna. Yes, I know, you will wonder why travelling so close from home since I have accustomed you to my tales from Patagonia, New Zealand, Indonesia…
This time I didn’t take any plane to visit this wonderful land, because the change it has experienced in recent years has been extraordinary and has made it the most ideal place in the world to regenerate and deal with a new mentality, which focuses on life.
Centuries-old beech forest: a natural antidepressant
Health and vitality depend on direct contact with nature: it is the biophilia effect
Many computer scientists I met have revealed to me that their secret dream would be to work with the earth or doing something that makes them spend time in close contact with nature. Spending many hours indoors in front of a computer studying codes leads them to alienation. They see in rural life their chance to rebirth, the possibility of a more balanced, fulfilling, and happy existence.
Erich Fromm – a famous psychotherapist and philosopher who lived in the mid-twentieth century – called the irresistible and indispensable attraction of man towards nature “biophilia”.
Something similar also happens to astronauts in space who spend the few free moments they have during the day staring at the Earth due to the natural attraction that the Blue Planet exerts towards them. Their perception, called “The Overview Effect”, is that of staring at a ball full of life.
EUZ…a place out of the ordinary…
“Energie und Umweltzentrum” – Centre for Energy and the Environment – is an independent and self-managed association that has been working on renewable energies, energy and water savings, green building and environmental education since 1981.
Its story begins this way: in order to give a practical realization to these topics, in the 1980s a group of young people engaged in the anti-nuclear movement bought and restructured, through a nationally launched subscription, a former school near Hanover that could function as a model demonstration.
PANTA REI…everything flows…
Panta Rei is a beautiful centre for sustainable development education near Lake Trasimeno.
The centre is open all year and it’s entirely built according to the principles of green building, with natural materials, producing energy from the sun and biomass and using natural materials and Phyto-purification systems for the ecological management of water.
CITTA’ DELLA LUCE
Città della Luce is not a real city, or rather it is not only this, but much more.
Everything started in the 1990s when a group of young men decided to dedicate their lives to the study and practice of Reiki. They joined forces, established a community and began to organize courses and events related to holistic disciplines in Genoa. Driven by the need to expand their spaces and to be surrounded by greenery, these people moved to Turbigo, near Novara, and then finally to the inland of the Marches, in a place full of peace and land to cultivate.
They wanted to experiment and create a new way of living and working, of being together in respect, with mutual support and trust. They wanted to cooperate in a dimension in which there is time and space to take care of ourselves and relationships, time for the partner and for the children, for studying, for personal growth and for professional self-realization.
Freedom and Self-sufficiency
I want to give the floor to a person who, in everyday life, strives to bring freedom into his life and into the lives of those who live around him. This is an interview to Francesco Angelo Rosso, born in 1985 and one of the youngest entrepreneurs in Romagna.
Life has led him to live personal and work experiences in search for freedom, true freedom. The kind of freedom that is not without rules but can also be experienced without rules, that becomes freedom when it is linked to self-sufficiency. – By the editorial staff of Vivi Consapevole in Romagna.
Do you feel free?
Unfortunately not. I continually realise I rely on patterns, conditionings and rules that imprison me. And I realise it even more after feeling free for a few days.
Heaven on Earth
What we sow today, we will collect it tomorrow
From an early age I tried to imagine what would have been the most beautiful job in the world. Initially I thought I wanted to be a lumberjack. Then I changed my mind, I wanted to become a forest ranger. I enrolled in the Professional Institute for Agriculture and the Environment with this intention, but after 2 years I changed my mind again. At the age of nineteen, I decided to study Tourism Economics because I liked the idea of traveling.
However, at 20 years old, I found myself managing the family business, so I convinced myself that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and started studying for this. At the age of 24, I bought 70 hectares of land with my family and decided I would become a farmer. Today at 33, I’m an entrepreneur, a farmer, a lumberjack, I manage a farm and everything that I had thought of individually exists at the same time. I love what I do but even more I love the idea of designing the most beautiful place in the world.