Growing Beyond the Fields
PONTINIA, ITALY — On her tiny farm in a former marshland reclaimed under Mussolini, Tiziana Lauretti grows plums and favetta di Terracina, the bright red, sweet strawberry celebrated in this patch of central Italy.
But oscillating demand for her crops and volatile food prices have pushed Ms. Lauretti to adopt the survival tactics typical of many small farms in Europe.
These days, visitors to this family owned homestead can gawk at a motley crew of farm animals, as well as two tetchy peacocks, the most recent addition to the menagerie, or buy homemade prune or strawberry jam. During the school year, she said, classrooms of children “who have never seen an egg outside of a supermarket” get their hands covered with flour while baking pizza in a small wood-burning oven on the farm, which covers just three hectares, or about seven acres.
If Ms. Lauretti’s experience is typical of small farmers scrabbling to make a living in an increasingly globalized economy, it is also typical in another way: Women, who manage one-third of Italian farms, have been particularly open to branching out the core business, what operators call multifunctional agriculture.
“I couldn’t make a living only by selling strawberries and plums,” Ms. Lauretti said. “Either you have a large farm, or you diversify, like we did.”
Andrea Segrè, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the University of Bologna, said women were finding “lots of space” in multifunctional areas like agricultural tourism, farmers’ markets, organic farming and direct sales.
