La Vita e Bella

"So, you have decided to become a peasant?" Was the first reaction of Italian cousins to news that I had decided to switch over to beef farming from journalism. I was in Italy for Easter after hitching a ride with my parents and I was trying to explain the complex rationale behind the decision, while at the same time trying to work out what 'life change' might be in Italian without referring inadvertently to some sort of painful transformative operation. 

"In England we call it becoming a gentleman farmer," I said.

"But you still have to shovel crap?," my cousin replied.

"Well, yes."

"So you are a peasant."

I gave up explaining at that point. There are few words more loaded with meaning in Italian than 'contadino' (peasant) and it tends to be used exclusively in a pejorative sense i.e. He is such a contadino, meaning uncouth, ignorant and unrefined. This is in many ways the ultimate insult to an Italian as the majority of the population are perhaps only one or two generations, at most, from the land and can't the bear the possibility of returning to their roots. In their eyes, they had the good sense to disappear years ago into the heart of urban Italy where jobs are better paid and the possibility of escaping your mother is greater. This is why Tuscany, Le Marche, Puglia and Sicily are full of the empty farm houses that British buyers love to renovate, and which are then burgled by organised Albanian gangs.  

It is understandable then why in the industrial north, where my family come from, that the notion of willingly returning to a less profitable and harder working way of life makes little sense. However, there maybe a slowly changing attitude driven by Italy's almost interminable economic crisis. To visit the country is to realise how lucky we are to have never entered the Euro. The entire place is littered with half completed building projects and unused apartments - Veneto alone is estimated to have 220,000 empty industrial and residential properties for which there are no buyers at all. The negative flip side to this is that youth unemployment is hovering at 40 per cent, while farming is starting to look attractive as a source of possible employment. Italian farms benefit from higher subsidies because of their smaller size, while at the same time growing highly commercial cash crops like soya and grapes. Also there is no currency risk as subsidies are paid in Euros. It is unsurprising, then, that young entrepreneurs have come out of university and gone back to revitalise the long abandoned family plot with agri tourism ventures or brand-new wine production facilities.

Grape growing in particular seems to have taken off to an extent that was unimaginable 20 years ago. The reason for this is that international food supply chains have grown longer and longer. Italian grape surpluses are often shipped to regions in Europe where there is a shortage and the same is true of grapes from Georgia and increasingly Armenia. The key point is that grapes are then fermented and bottled in the nominal country of origin, which is why producers can say "made in France/Germany/Italy" on their wares. However, like everything else, our food and drink is subject to the inevitable market force that home production cannot meet international demand, so must be bulked out somehow. For the most part, the system works well, until you find a horse in your lasagne. Pass the Barolo....

Asolo, also known as the jewel of Veneto, or the city of a 100 beautiful views. Hemingway got drunk here once.