Perfect!
Will send a reminder next week, but before that: Vlad and everyone - please block the date in your calendar!
This session will be from 18:00 to 19:30 maximum, so a little shorter than the last time 
I’m happy to join the conversation.
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Hi there, last sunday i was visiting a social garden here in Parma, in the northern part of Italy, where members should garden a spot of it and keep it open to the public at least once per season for some activities, mainly cultural. At the same time i’m participating in a A Study Group for Restoring Planetary Health and Avoiding Human Extinction called “Earth Regenerators” (https://earth-regenerators.mn.co/), whose goal is to advocate for bioregions. I think that taking action in cities and towns with youngsters especially, might create a fruitful ground to inspire gardeners, but also farmers and self standing communities in rural areas. In Italy there are many little ghost towns (borghi), some even medieval on the mountains, or abandoned ruined farms in the country side. Financial aids and public support -as far as i know- are not so well developed, although a transition from high intensive coltures to saustainable and bio agricolture are growing year by year.
For instance, a group of citizens are taking care of another garden in a far side of Parma called Picasso Food Forest, inspired to urban forests and part of a project called Fruttorti (http://www.fruttortiparma.it/). The idea is to develop projects by a community of volunteers and experts to rebalance and connect people to nature. Also students, migrants and researchers that come from other sides of Italy and Europe visit often the project and join temporarily the community. See you on the 23rd!
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Thank you for sharing this @federico_monaco! And good to hear from you, it’s been a while,
What you describe I believe happens a lot here and there: for example, I myself when I was part of a local community supported agriculture group with urbanites getting their veggie baskets weekly had to work closely with the farmers to jump in when their crops were affected by weather events i.e. we did a mobilising action to go ‘save the tomatoes’ because the farmers were lacking labour. The issue I see is that these (my and your examples too) fall more in the category civil society: it’s based on organisations doing community mobilisations, intermediating between citizens and farmers, and this rests on subsidies, public or private - even though there was the lucrative advantage for the farmers whose income depended on this group of consumers.
But still, this goes to tell that the civil society and public funding play a key role.
Where do you see opportunities for more economical benefits in your examples, if you think about entire rural communities being able to make a living out of their valuable work, caring for the environment and so on?
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Hi @noemi,
I think new rural economy based on sustainability, resiliency, SLOC dynamics, and so on, be part of new ways to conceive values, not only standarides by money and what you might buy by it, but by so called “ecological transition” also good information, good quality of life, commons and “farming with nature”. Is just my opinion, but there is a missing link between urban and rural, as there is between public and private when it comes to agricolture. Going back to farming, or better going forward to farming in certain informed ways (a steampunk narrative perhaps) could foster the roles of farmers at the global level and connect solutions for pollution, climate change, global market, to small and local quality. Cities and citizens as consumers should boost such process perhaps.
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This is really the point that perhaps we should take on board during our event - the interconnections between our planet health and the food chain, and how the rural livelihoods could mediate that!
@Dragan_Jonic made a similar connection here between industrial plants built in rural areas and reviving local food - his approach is activism and working very closely with farmers to support them to cultivate in natural ways, and bank on the national tourism who starts to converge to an endangered rural area but also provides economic benefits to locals: How do we bring people back to rural areas and support local food production?
I am interested in participating.
Now I live in Warsaw in Poland but in future I think about moving to a rural area and become a farmer. Most likely I will do it with other people.
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I tried a couple of times to initiate something like this, and didn’t work. I’ll try again. Please count me in.
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Welcome on board @Emblotka123, happy to have you in our community!
Can I ask you: what motivates you to start such a project? Is this something you think is becoming more attractive for people who live in cities in Poland?
To you and @Alessandro: w e will send the link to the Zoom event Monday morning!
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Ecological farming in Poland is made on a really small scale. I feel that there is a need to give people chance to have access to good quality food in a reasonable prices. Also alternatives to big supermarkets are needed like cooperatives, direct cooperations between farmers and customers.
Regarding living in the village it depends more on personal needs, awareness ect.
For me personally for my mental and physical health I need a quite place and being close to nature. I would like to live in a community where social relations are strong, focused on cooperation and mutual support. And being
surrounded by other people who have sensitivity to other people or creatures or the effect of their actions on the environment.
By my project I would like to show people that another structures than those offered by capitalist world and big organizations are possible.
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I heard an interesting presentation a year or so ago about valuing land and the soil. Turns out that even if you do conventional economics properly, industrial farming looks like asset destruction. Laws definitely needed here!
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count me in
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Hello @noemi
based in rural Polish countryside I am a researcher in a field of management studies (main topics: alternative management, critical management, permaculture management, eco-villages). Having small permaculture garden, I am part of local food cooperative. Hope to hear you soon!
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Hi @aleks.jaszczyk, very nice to e-meet you!
I am now emailing you the link to tonight’s session, let me know if you get it and see you in a few hours!
The obvious question to ask you, reading your introduction, is: how is your life in the countryside and how do you combine your research work with gardening and other more ‘rural’ activities? Does this work for you, and do you still go to the city a lot to meet other people?
Thanks for telling us more!
Thanks for asking and zoom invitation: received!
Working in the garden is ideally involved in research work as a moment of self-reflection and disconnection from online work, as I conduct my interviews and study mainly online. I rarely visit the city for the most urgent matters. Classes are fully online. My closest friends do not live in cities, but are rather scattered around rural areas, so we usually see each other in small groups at home.
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Hello everybody 
It is nice to meet you. I cannot wait our today discussion and I would like to say sorry for late presentation. I am mostly interested in the first topic “Rural areas are not attractive, not vibrant. How could we have more farmers or do more farming?”.
You can find here my page https://foodlaw.business.site/ where I describe my scientific and professional interests. I have been committed to European food sovereignty for two years but interested in the subject of food for many years. I was inspired by living in Italy. I have also attended interesting training courses in France, Spain, and Austria, which has drawn me so much in that I have spent my entire life supporting peasants and producing good food. Recently, I have been very interested in the issues of social and solidarity economy, especially local activities and relationship economics. I am involved in a scientific approach to cooperatives and seed law.
Greetings,
Karo
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Hello @Slow_Karolina, welcome on board and lovely to see your enthusiasm !
Not sure if you are the same Karolina as the one I have been emailing with (from Poland?), so let me know if you have received the link to the event? If not, I will email it to you asap.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t come in the end. hope it went well and looking forward to another occasion.
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It went very well Simon. I think the group got on well enough that everyone wants to keep talking - hopefully that materializes here on the platform.
Thanks to everyone who joined or couldn’t in the end, but are participating
On my to dos:
- write the summary of the conversation (next Monday)
- suppport Christiana to share her project on the platform
- connect you all further: for example, remember the platform Jasen was talking about? Some more information about it in his post here: Sustainable development: focus on rural areas and food localisation
@All: From yesterday: what you think were the most relevant ideas discussed? Did someone said something you consider very important? I will make sure to include that in the summary!
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