~ by Andrea Ghelfi¹ ~

Abstract

A pivotal issue in contemporary peasant and agroecological movements is that of access to land. Mondeggi Bene Comune is a singular experience of occupation, civic use and ecological land repair. An experience that has lasted ten years, and in which agroecological practice powerfully intertwines the theme of emerging commons. In this article I aim to revisit the experience of Mondeggi Bene Comune from a specific perspective: to explore the intertwining of commons and agroecology in an attempt to offer a point of view that focuses on the role of everyday practices of material repair in the processes of socio-ecological transition of territories

Peasant movements and alternative peasant material politics

Peasant movements are highlighting how, in the global context, agroecology and the experimentation with sustainable local food systems are two key pillars of the processes of re-peasantization of the rural world. By enacting different possibilities for relationships between humans, territory, and food, the food sovereignty and agroecology movements are creating a food and agriculture politics that are radically alternative to those proposed by agribusiness and large-scale organized distribution.

Permaculture, organic farming, biodynamics, regenerative agriculture—these are some of the practices that converge around the need to care for soil health and the broader ecologies in which we cultivate food, starting from the experimentation with alternative material politics.They are other ways of practicing agriculture while simultaneously building solidarity-based communities through food distribution networks that bring together producers and co-producers, as well as urban and rural contexts. The paths of food sovereignty entail the responsibility of participants to support the chains of cultivation, circulation, and consumption of genuine food, which means being involved in the processes of food production and distribution by inventing alternatives (community-supported agriculture, participatory guarantee models, solidarity purchasing groups, self-managed farmers’ markets, self-organized food cooperatives) to the large supply chains that dominate the existing agri-food system.

A key issue for contemporary peasant and agroecological movements is access to land, and therefore a peasant reappropriation of land, with the aim of transforming the ways in which people relate to the territory. A unique experience of land reappropriation and grassroots socio-ecological transition is that of Mondeggi Bene Comune, Fattoria Senza Padroni[Mondeggi common good, farm without bosses]—an initiative that has been ongoing for ten years, where agroecological practice strongly intertwines with the theme of emerging commons.

In this article, I aim to revisit the experience of Mondeggi Bene Comune, albeit necessarily in a partial and overly linear manner, from a specific perspective: exploring the interweaving of commons and agroecology in an attempt to offer a point of view that places at the center the role of everyday material repair practices in the socio-ecological transition processes of territories.

History of Mondeggi

The Mondeggi farm is located in the municipality of Bagno a Ripoli, about twelve kilometers from the center of Florence. It is a medieval complex that, over the years, passed into the hands of various Florentine noble families, who used it as an agricultural estate and hunting reserve. In the 1960s, the villa and the entire farm were purchased by the Province of Florence, becoming public property. With this change of ownership, the Mondeggi farm became the headquarters of the agricultural company Mondeggi Lappeggi S.r.l., in which the Province of Florence was the sole shareholder, holding 100% of the capital. The farm was structured as a conventional, intensive, monocultural, and mechanized agricultural enterprise, with olive trees, vineyards, and other crops such as wheat and sunflower planted according to this model of agriculture.

In its final years, the company accumulated a debt of over one million euros, leading to its bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation in 2009. From that moment on, the entire estate was progressively abandoned, resulting in the deterioration of buildings and the degradation of crops, including vineyards and olive groves.

Reclaiming the commons

Since 2011, the Mondeggi estate has become the focus of a struggle: the public authority intended to sell it to private buyers to generate revenue, while a diverse community of citizens and activists began mobilizing to prevent its sale. In June 2014, the mobilization took a significant turn: through the practice of occupation, the history of Mondeggi Bene Comune began.

“Se Mondeggi non si vende” (“If Mondeggi is not for sale”) became the rallying cry of a struggle against privatization. Direct action became the concrete method through which the mobilization gave birth to a new institution—a counter-power that, from below, produced declarations, collective management regulations, and daily processes of civic and communal use of the land. The fight to defend public ownership gave rise to an institution of the common.

In June 2014, the estate was occupied by a group of activists, becoming the largest land occupation in Italy, covering nearly 170 hectares. The process of collective appropriation, stewardship, and civic use of the Mondeggi lands—called Mondeggi Bene Comune, Fattoria Senza Padroni—is the most significant experiment of the Terra Bene Comune campaign, launched in 2013 by the Genuino Clandestino network to oppose the privatization of publicly owned land.

Organization

A peasant outpost [presidio contadino] was established, occupying three farmhouses, living and working the land, and producing bread, honey, beer, wine, olive oil, herbal products (such as teas, natural cosmetics, tinctures, etc.), vegetables, and saffron. These products are sold at Mondeggi, at farmers’ markets in Florence, and within the self-organized networks of Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (Solidarity Purchasing Groups).

A significant portion of the land is available to anyone who wishes to join the MO.T.A. (Mondeggi Terreni Autogestiti, self-managed lands of Mondeggi) and MO.V.A. (Mondeggi Vigneti Autogestiti, self-managed vineyards of Mondeggi) projects. A large part of the olive grove, vineyard, and vegetable gardens are divided into parcels and distributed. These projects of civic land use and self-sufficient food production involve more than 300 people, ensuring the care of olive trees, vineyards, and the cultivation of around fifty vegetable gardens.

The Mondeggi Terreni Autogestiti (MO.T.A.) project was launched at the beginning of the occupation in November 2014. For this project, a section of the olive grove was identified and divided into parcels (each consisting of about 30-35 olive trees, an amount calculated to provide self-sufficiency in olive oil for a household of approximately 3-4 people). These parcels were made available to anyone who wanted to participate. Those who join MO.T.A. are responsible for carrying out seasonal tasks (such as pruning, maintenance and cleaning, and harvesting) on their portion of land and for participating in collective work efforts. Each year, a portion of Mondeggi’s olive oil is redistributed among the participants.

Like MO.T.A., the more recent MO.V.A. project follows the same principles, but focuses on vineyard management. In this case as well, the opportunity to manage one or more rows of vines comes with an annual share of wine. These two projects have enabled the restoration of much of the olive grove and vineyards while allowing hundreds of people to take part in the stewardship of Mondeggi, expanding its emerging community.

Every two years, Mondeggi hosts the Scuola Contadina (Peasant School), an initiative that runs for several months, offering courses and lessons on peasant knowledge and self-sufficient food production. The courses, which attract hundreds of participants from beyond the regional territory, include workshops on beekeeping, natural sourdough breadmaking, organic horticulture, olive growing, organic viticulture, and herbal medicine.

The bottom line: emergence through commoning . . .

The commons of Mondeggi are inseparable from the construction of a non-proprietary and open territory. From this perspective, Mondeggi can be seen as an experiment in civic land use that is irreducible to modern property law, which is incapable of understanding land use beyond the complementary categories of public and private ownership. But the commons are something more.

Here, the commons do not only refer to the invention of collective management practices, the exercise of grassroots democracy, or common access to and use of land—though these are certainly key elements of Mondeggi’s politics. From the very beginning, the people involved in the project have defined Mondeggi as a territory of emerging commons, meaning that different spheres of the commons emerge within a commoning practice that involves daily cohabitation with other people, as well as with animals, plants, and soil.

It is not just about social commons but also ecological commons, which arise from the process of putting matter in common. The commons of Mondeggi are inseparable from agroecology, material repair, a reinvention of rural ways of life, and the desire to cultivate a daily relationship with the land.

The multiple temporalities of care and ecological repair are complex and layered, leading us to question to what extent a monoculture of vines and an olive grove of ten thousand trees can align with an ecological understanding of agriculture—one in which biodiversity networks and multispecies commensality make a farm sustainable. In ecological repair, one rarely starts from scratch.

The Mondeggi community is struggling to inherit a land shaped by industrial agriculture, engaging in a complex process of ecological restoration: planting an orchard, introducing animals to the farm, changing pruning and olive-growing techniques, increasing organic matter in the soil, and recycling rainwater. The ongoing agroecological regeneration of Mondeggi teaches us to learn how to inherit what has been damaged, to remain engaged with the problem of wounded worlds, and to think about ecological repair through practices of care that transform the ways we inhabit a territory.

. . . in challenging conditions . . .

A particularly complex challenge for Mondeggi is the transformation of what was once a specialized and intensive farm—where land and crops were managed using conventional agricultural methods—into a collectively managed farm based on agroecological principles. Managing a 200-hectare farm agroecologically, especially when two monocultures have historically shaped its agricultural identity, is a demanding task.

. . .needs that we take a grounded and relational perspective . . .

An agroecological approach, in fact, has very little in common with the very concept of monoculture. The work of the Mondeggi community has been to reimagine the farm through a peasant perspective, based on a multifunctional and biodiverse approach. All the new activities initiated with the establishment of the peasant outpost have been designed with an agroecological vision, enriching the interconnections between human activities and the land.

Examples of this approach include the creation of two organic and synergistic vegetable gardens where vegetables, saffron, medicinal, and aromatic plants are cultivated; the recovery of 15 hectares of arable fields through the rotation of cereals, legumes, and fodder crops; the sowing of ancient wheat varieties and evolutionary populations with high genetic diversity; as well as the introduction of livestock farming, beekeeping, and other practices.

. . . because there is lots that needs repair and transformation.

Regarding the recovery of the vineyard and olive groves, the greatest difficulty lies in dealing with plants that were cultivated for industrial management—designed to maximize yield and facilitate mechanization for most operations. This includes plants placed very close to one another, rows with little spacing, and a lack of intercropping strategies that could enhance biodiversity and provide symbiotic plant protection.

In the vineyards, the plants had been accustomed to nutrient supplements, chemical fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, and herbicides to eliminate weeds. Over the past eight years, they have been cared for using organic farming practices. The main focus of this work has been the attempt to restore soil fertility and organic matter, which had been depleted by years of intensive agricultural practices. To revitalize the soil, the technique of green manure is used—sowing crops such as grasses, legumes, and crucifers between the rows to improve organic matter content, enhance soil porosity, control weeds, and increase plant biodiversity.

Nevertheless, the structural characteristics of specialized monoculture make the plants more vulnerable to diseases and pests, making it necessary to apply phytosanitary treatments against the most common vineyard diseases. The use of plant protection products in the vineyard (mainly copper and sulfur) is minimized as much as possible, aided by the combination with certain organic substances that help these treatments adhere to the leaves for longer. The vineyard is showing good signs of recovery, and the quality of the grapes has improved over the years.

This type of management requires constant attention, continuous and careful observation of the climate, the plants, and the soil. Ecological regeneration demands long timeframes and daily care, both in the vineyard and in the olive grove.

The olive trees of Mondeggi are relatively young, mostly planted around the 1980s and trained using a monocone pruning system. This method, contrary to the natural growth tendency of olive trees, promotes vertical development and is specifically designed for harvesting olives using mechanical trunk shakers.

In recent years, most of the trees have been reshaped through polyconic vase pruning system,balancing the tree’s natural growth with efficient fruit harvesting. This transition requires a long recovery period, and it takes years before the trees return to full production.

Soil fertility in the olive grove is enhanced through various techniques: green manure, animal grazing, mulching pruned branches to return nutrients to the soil, and ground cover vegetation to support plant biodiversity and improve water drainage.

Neither prophecies of Catastrophe, nor teleologies of salvation

The perspective of ecological repair asks us to distance ourselves from two tendencies that, in various ways, intersect debates on the relationship between ecology and society: the prophecies of catastrophe and the teleologies of salvation. Both of these approaches to ecological conflict suggest that we will have to abandon this world in order to start anew.

Rather than denying the world, experiments in ecological repair help us learn how to inherit what has been damaged without rejecting it. The task of ecological repair practices is to stay with the problem of damaged worlds while keeping politics alive. Keeping politics alive not only means going beyond cynicism and despair but also taking seriously the issues that require us to think and act together—the concrete opportunities before us, the challenges of commoning in both human and more-than-human worlds.

Commoning gathers a community around a territory, and as of July 2021, the owning entity—now called Città Metropolitana di Firenze—abandoned the plan to sell the estate. The mobilization has won, although, as we will see, it is a partial victory for now. Città Metropolitana has launched a project to renovate the entire area using funds from the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) while also opening negotiations with the community to facilitate a process of legal recognition for the initiative.

At the same time, after more than a year of collective discussion, the community lost part of itself: those who did not believe that Mondeggi’s future could also involve negotiation between the commons and public institutions decided to leave the experience.

Those who remain, however, claim everything and prepare to give continuity and longevity to this experiment in a new phase of mobilization. They claim the occupation and popular distribution of land, the active role of transformative direct action in preventing privatization, and the community management of this territory through agroecological practices. Their goal is to make the Mondeggi estate a legally recognized and juridically identifiable commons.

Moreover, since 2022, the community has been preparing a counter-plan: together with numerous local associations, they have begun developing the Mondeggi2026 project, which aims to turn Mondeggi into a commons increasingly populated by practices of cultural innovation, solidarity, social inclusion, scientific research, agricultural production, and education in sports and the arts.

At present, the community is putting forward three proposals to Città Metropolitana di Firenze:

1. Clear guarantees that the residential peasant outpost and social activities will be allowed to continue during the estate’s renovation work.
2. Recognition of Mondeggi as a commons, applying the regional law on common goods.
3. The allocation of land and farmhouses to the Mondeggi2026 project.

The Mondeggi2026 coalition is the result of a grassroots territorial planning process, involving not only the Mondeggi community but also key allies working to broaden participation in this self-organized territorial process.

The game is open, as it has always been in Mondeggi’s history.

1. Andrea Ghelfi is a researcher in environmental and territorial sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Florence. His studies and publications combine an interest in agroecology and ecological movements with theoretical research on the emergence of a new ecological materialism. Among his publications, we can mention La Condizione Ecologica (Florence, Edifir, 2022) and his editorial work on Connessioni ecologiche. Per una politica della rigenerazione: leggendo Haraway, Stengers e Latour (Verona, Ombre Corte, 2022). Among his publications in English see Andrea Ghelfi and Dimitris Papadopoulos (2022). Ungovernable Earth: Resurgence, Translocal Infrastructures and More-than-Social Movements. ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES, vol. 31, pp. 681-699 and Andrea Ghelfi and Dimitris Papadopoulos (2021). Ecological Transition: What It Is and How to Do It. Community Technoscience and Green Democracy. TECNOSCIENZA, vol. 12, pp. 13-38. ↩︎