Wednesday, September 12, 2018

A Giant Success For One Small Municipality


By Gwen Anderson

The story we want to share with you this week is filled with hope and encouragement.  It has been exciting for us here at Harmony Valley Farm over the past few weeks as we’ve dug deeper into this rich story.  There is far too much for us to be able to sum up in one article, so we’ve shared some resources for you at the end of the article and encourage you to dive into this story and learn more.  The story is about a small township called Mals, which is (to our knowledge) the first municipality in the world to ban pesticides.  We first leaned about Mals when we read about it in an article in September’s issue of Acres U.S.A.  The article was an interview with Philip Ackerman-Leist, a farmer and professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at Green Mountain College in Vermont, who is also the author of A Precautionary Tale.  Ackerman-Leist is very familiar with the area surrounding Mals, since he lived and worked in the area as a farmer in the early 1990s.  In both his book and the article we read, he highlights the struggles Mals went through on its long and difficult journey to become a pesticide free municipality.  Their story is one of perseverance, tenacity, convictions, and the desire to, as Farmer Richard would say, “do the right thing.”

Mals, photo from motherearthnews.com
Mals (pronounced Mahltz) is a township located in the Upper Vinschgau Valley of the Italian Alps, in a region called South Tirol.  The township is made up of 11 villages ranging in altitudes of 3,000 to 5,500 feet.  The largest of the villages lends its name to the municipality, so the villages are collectively known as Mals.  Even though the township is in Italy, the inhabitants speak German and retain their Austro-Hungarian heritage.  The residents of Mals have been farmers for 30-35 generations, tending their small family farms and carrying on traditions of rotating grain crops with vegetable crops and keeping their soil healthy.  Most of the farms are small dairy farms, owning 8-12 cows, who grow their own vegetables and have a handful of fruit trees near their homes.  The area surrounding Mals is also the driest in the Alps, with only about 50 days of rain a year, but the water coming down from glaciers and easy access to irrigation have made this a prime agricultural region.

Ulrich Veith, Mayor of Mals
Photo from thelexicon.org
Ulrich Veith became mayor of Mals in 2009.  He was elected because of his desire to create a sustainable municipality while keeping with the local traditions.  The township was building a micro-hydro-system to generate green energy to power their homes, businesses, and the new Swiss-built train that brought their long abandoned rail system back into use.  The train brought tourists who were interested in Mals’ picturesque landscape and the town responded by making bike trails and opening South Tirol’s first organic hotel.  It was a new renaissance period for the people of Mals.
Elsewhere in South Tirol, there was another sort of renaissance happening.  Climate change warmed the Alps and made South Tirol a perfect place to grow fruit, and apples were becoming the biggest money maker around.  The farmers’ cooperatives were building their brands and spreading their markets across Europe and Russia.  They borrowed the efficient tree trellis method developed by the Dutch and the small 3-4 acre orchards were rolling in money.  With money in hand and looking to expand, the apple farmers set their sights on Mals and the valley below, where they could snatch up land at a low price.  With the apples came the pesticides.  Apple farmers are able to legally spray up to 30 different pesticides, each one being sprayed 12-14 times a year.  While the rest of South Tirol was using 35 pounds of pesticides per acre per year, Mals was making a wide-spread movement to organic agriculture.

Gluderer family's herb farm, Castle of Herbs
photo from vinschgau.net
The valley below Mals, which had once mirrored Mals’ picturesque medieval farm landscape, had transformed into a sea of commercial apple orchards.  Urban Gluderer and his family, whom had started an organic herb farm down in the valley in the 1990s, were soon surrounded by conventional apple orchards and quickly found the pesticide drift was spreading to their land.  They planted hedges to protect their herbs, but the produce was still too tainted by pesticides to sell.  After several attempts to speak with government officials in the provincial capital failed to provide an adequate response, the Gluderers spent a quarter of a million dollars to cover their farm with greenhouses as a means to protect their livelihood from the chemical trespass.

In 2009, Günther Wallnöfer, an organic dairy farmer in Mals, watched as two commercial apple orchards went in next to his hay fields.  He didn’t feel the legal requirement of a 3 meter (10 feet) buffer between fields was going to protect his farm, and stories like the Gluderer’s only gave him justification to worry.  As Ackerman-Leist said in the article, “You can’t even turn your tractor around in a 10 foot radius!”  The next year, Wallnöfer had cuttings of his hay tested for pesticides.  The first came back tainted, as did the second and third.  Wallnöfer went to see the new mayor and asked him to do something.  In a community that has a wind named after them, everyone knew that no one was safe from chemical drift.  Per Ackerman-Leist, “Pesticides represented the death knell to the renaissance that [Veith, Wallnöfer] and others had worked so hard to bring about.”  So Veith went to the provincial and local governments for assistance.  What Veith received were two test orchards, supposedly to test pesticide drift, but also to trial new fruit varieties.  The people of Mals didn’t want more orchards, and didn’t see the need for further testing when there was already enough evidence of the dangers pesticide drift presented.  In the summer of 2012, much to the chagrin of the township, the test orchards were built.  In the end, the test orchards brought talks about changing the buffer law, but nothing substantial ever came from them.

Dr. Johannes Fragner-Untherpertinger
photo from thelexicon.org
It was clear that the provincial government didn’t have its sights on the same goal, so the citizens rallied; not just the farmers and environmentalists, but small business owners, the local medical community, and concerned parents.  The Advocacy Committee for a Pesticide-Free Mals was born in February of 2013, and Dr. Johannes Fragner-Unterpertinger, the local pharmacist, was elected as the spokesperson.  The Advocacy Committee started talking about a possible referendum to ban pesticides in Mals.  Speakers from around the world were brought in to educate the community of Mals on pesticides, from toxicologists (Dr. Irene Witte) and entomologists (Dr. Hans Rudolf Herren), to an EU food safety expert (Hermine Reich) who supported “safe pesticide use.”

In the summer of 2013, Dr. Unterpertinger, together with fellow activist Dr. Elisabeth Viertler, a pediatrician, wrote a Manifesto of Doctors and Pharmacists calling attention to the health dangers that pesticides present.  It was signed by 51 members of the local medical community.  Ackerman-Leist quoted the pharmacist as saying “When I see something jeopardizing the population here, which is coming in tiny increments, just in the same way the medicine I give out is prescribed in tiny increments, there is no way that I see that as appropriate.”  “None of these pesticides are harmless,” Dr. Unterpertinger said.  “Providing this information over the last years has borne its fruit. The community now understands how dangerous pesticides are. If you have a bit of a conscience, you cannot stay silent as a doctor.”

Meetings and education were not the only form of activism in Mals.  A group called Adam & Epfl (or Adam & Apple in English, is a play on words for ‘Adam and Eve’ in the local dialect) held cultural events to showcase Mals’ unique culture and support the sustainable economic development the township was striving for.  They have also been known to use a guerrilla art tactic or two, leaving painted snakes around the towns and apple orchards as a reminder not to be tempted by the “promises” of the Big Apple (a term coined to describe the commercial apple industry modeled after the term “Big Ag” in the US)
. 
5 members of Hollawint, from left: Pia Oswald, Dr. Elisabeth
Viertler, Beatrice Raas, Martina Hellrigl, and Margit Gasser
Photo from thelexicon.org
Martina Hellrigl and Beatrice Raas, the founders of a woman’s group called Hollawint (which means “Stop right there!”), wrote letters to the local newspapers pleading for the mayor to protect their health after the first submission of the referendum was declined.  Their first letter, which appeared multiple times with over 60 different signatures, read: “The increasing use of pesticides and herbicides in the municipality of Mals has us highly concerned for our health and especially the health of our children.  We ask our Mayor, who is responsible for the health of our citizens, to ensure that our environment and our health are not endangered.”  Another of their letters, sent to government officials during the referendum vote in September of 2014, focused on the highly profitable tourist trade: “We wish for everything that the tourist brochures have long promised: highly valued, healthy, and diverse foods that are grown in healthy soil and embedded in a landscape in which people, animals, and plants all have the possibility of a healthy life. We request that you publicly give us positive support in public and act accordingly.”  During the same time Dr. Unterpertinger was releasing his manifesto, the women of Hollawing hung over 100 recycled bedsheets throughout Mals stenciled with slogans promoting a pesticide-free future.  Hollawint also borrowed the guerrilla art tactic from Adam & Epfl by placing hay-stuffed pesticide suits sporting signs explaining the dangers of pesticides in high traffic areas around the township, and painted sunflowers to remind people to vote “Ja!” (or “Yes!”) for the pesticide ban referendum.

Eco-tourism was also a huge weapon the residents of Mals had in their arsenal.  “Probably the biggest mistake Big Apple made was overestimating their actual economic importance,” Ackerman-Leist stated.  “Agriculture only accounts for 6% of the South Tirolean economy, while tourism is closer to 25%.”  Elsewhere in South Tirol, stories were emerging about bicycling tourists being sprayed by pesticides while riding the countryside.  In April of 2013, a Swiss newspaper ran an article saying pesticides were ruining South Tirol as a vacation spot, which the region’s governor scoffed at.  Germany and Austria are also a huge tourism market for the South Tirol area.  When the Environmental Institute of Munich ran a campaign in April last year declaring many of the areas in South Tirol too filled with pesticides to visit, the South Tirolean government and tourism office were up in arms.  The institute then sponsored a bus trip to the villages of Mals in an effort to support their pesticide-free initiative.  A German tourism magazine interviewed Mayor Veith, which Ackerman-Leist summed up: “He essentially said, ‘We offer the perfect opportunity for eco-tourists.  Why wouldn’t you come to Mals, where you don’t have to worry about pesticide drift in your hotel or being sprayed when you’re out bicycling?’”

A Farmer's Future's logo
photo from thelexicon.org
Once Big Apple realized the citizens of Mals were serious about their referendum and were not going to just go away, groups were formed to fight back and put pressure on the government to intervene in their defense.  While the first attempt to submit a referendum failed, the second gained almost 3 times the signatures of support required in 2014.  In response, a media campaign called A Farmer’s Future was launched by the commercial fruit industry and allies of the South Tirolean Farmers Association.  This group tried to stop the referendum vote by requesting that the government invalidate Mals’ town council’s decision to allow the referendum only weeks before the vote.  The South Tirolean officials themselves had already stalled the vote on the referendum once by refusing to give Mayor Veith the voter list, saying the referendum was inadmissible.  When Veith countered the officials, they found an error on the request form and reminded the mayor that the voter list request must be completed, correctly, 45 days before the vote, thus forcing a reschedule.

Finally in September 2014, the citizens of Mals were able to pass the referendum to ban pesticides with 76% of voter’s support, but it still wasn’t enough to make it a law.  Mayor Veith and the town council had laid the groundwork for a referendum passed by the people to become law in 2012, but the change in the municipal code did not guarantee the referendum would be turned into law, only that it must be considered.  The ordinances imposing the referendum weren’t passed until March 2017.  According to Ackerman-Leist “it took more than a year and an election of town councilors before they actually voted to develop the ordinances to implement the referendum.”

Part of the issue slowing the referendum being turned into law was legal uncertainty.  The town council’s vote to change the municipality laws failed twice, in no small part due to lawsuits against the referendum (and a number of the activists) being paid for by the South Tirol Farmer’s Association, which supported commercial interests.  In 2016, the provincial courts even declared that the referendum was illegal because it was sponsored by the Advocacy Committee, six months after Mayor Veith and the town council had drafted the ordinances.  “The Malsers saw that as a technicality,” Ackerman-Leist stated.  “The ordinances for a pesticide-free Mals were not overturned.”

Ägidius Wellenzohn, photo from vip.coop
Lawsuits were not the only backlash the Mals activist saw.  Mayor Veith, a member of the region’s most prevalent political party, was under constant political pressure.  Dr. Unterpertinger, whose family had been pharmacists in the area for hundreds of years, received death threats and required police protection.  His garden was destroyed and his family’s graves were vandalized.  Ägidius Wellenzohn, another prominent activist, has been an organic fruit grower for 30 years.  Someone entered his orchard and sprayed it with glyphosate, not only destroying his crop for that year but also compromising his organic status for the next several years.  “Obviously, this is not something I ever wanted,” Ackerman-Leist quoted Wellenzohn as saying, “but I also realize that this is the price sometimes you pay for activism.  It’s still worth it to me to have been this involved.”
The town pulled together to support Wellenzohn, just as they had been supporting each other throughout the rest of their fight to live a life free of pesticides.  “I have the right not to be poisoned.  It would seem normal, but it’s something we need to fight for, not to be poisoned,” Dr. Unterpertinger says in a video from Friends of the Earth.  “They say that Bertol Brect says ‘[he] who fights may lose, but [he] who doesn’t fight [has] already lost.’  To say ‘Oh, well, there is nothing I can do,’ is unacceptable.” 

Mals, photo from independentsciencenews.org
Mals is a lesson for us all on how education and collective community persistence can win against even the seemingly unbeatable Goliath powers of commercialism and industry.  When we consider the negative impact “Big Ag” has in our own country, it can seem impossible that “we” can ever find success in opposing their efforts to influence government and support their cause with the power of the almighty dollar.  Mals’ success story is one that many European groups, including the Pesticide Action Network and Friends of the Earth, are trying to spread with the hope that this story will be emulated in other communities, much to the delight of many of the people of Mals.  “I see it almost as a gift, what happened here,” Martina Hellrigl says in the above video.  “It’s a beautiful story and we hope this beautiful story acts like a seed.  I hope Hollawint’s seed grows in other places also.”

Resources:

Philip Ackerman-Leist’s book, A Precautionary Tale: chelseagreen.com/product/a-precautionary-tale
                In audiobook format: amazon.com/precautionary-tale-pesticides-preserved-heritage/dp/1603587055

Lexicon Multimedia Project: topplinggoliath.org



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