Camp Di Grano

Description

Alex Giordano:

"#Campdigrano 4.0:

The most exemplary experience, in this regard, was realized in July 2019 on the occasion of the Palio del Grano which is held every year in Caselle in Pittari, a small village in the heart of the Cilento, a rural Southern Italian area in the province of Salerno. A group of young people, with just a handful of ancient seeds, created a network of companies a few years ago. These local businesses cooperate with the community to produce and improve seeds that have not undergone laboratory hybridization, but are subjected to genetic improvement processes through seed mixtures.

The young people from Caselle In Pittari are full-fledged heroes and like brothers to me. Together with our Incartata headquarters manager Michele Sica — and in reality with many others as well, with whom these bridges of transition with the RuralHub and RuralHack projects were thought up — and our Caselle “cumpari” (or mates/friends) community we shared a series of practices to support what is known as the neo-rural movement in Italy.

This was a week of collaboration, a week in which farmers, growers, young people from nearby towns and schools, worked with researchers from University of Naples Federico II, independent researchers from Officine Innesto’ mentors involved in studying digital transformation for SMEs, experts in the agrifood system (from seed genetics to organic market experts), and engineers expert in the field of Arduino systems designed for agriculture.

The experiment allowed distant communities such as small-town elderly farmers in southern Italy to come together with Turin-based engineers designing international open source technologies. Despite language-related issues or terminology barriers, the common root between these two communities was well-proved. This common root concerns the style of their practices bringing together fabers and sapiens. The focus is on being makers with a hacker attitude, being experimental, wanting to compare and share, wanting to find “solutions by bringing hands and heads together.” The RuralHack team made up of university trainees, professors and mentors for the digital transformation of businesses played the roles of facilitator and mediator." (https://www.shareable.net/synergy-not-disruption-industry-4-0-meets-traditional-wisdom-in-rural-italy/)