This commoning experience – the Farm without Masters – was not officially recognised. Repeated attempts by the students to enter into dialogue with the municipality – the easiest strategy for legalising their living situation and farming activities – met with no response. Instead, they focused on gaining popular support from the wider area. The very first activity organised by the students and the farmers was a collective olive harvest. They pressed the olives, sold the oil in peasant markets around Florence, and handed out leaflets explaining how the community was working to revive Mondeggi and prevent it from becoming a tourist resort.
Today, the Farm without Masters is firmly embedded in the local community. It works with two main assemblies: the original Mondeggi committee consisting of activists and farmers, which makes most of the political decisions, and the community of mostly younger people who focus on the communitarian aspect of living on the estate.
What happened when COVID struck and state regulations reached the community?
"In Italy, COVID-related measures were very disruptive. We had three months of ‘strong lockdown’: 1,000 people were dying every day and nobody was allowed to leave their homes. These governmental measures were heavily contested. Paradoxically, the community in Mondeggi found itself in a very safe spot: they had each other, they had crops in the field so they didn't need to line up in the supermarket, and they could take the kids from the village to run around in the hills. This was confirmation that what they were doing was a viable alternative to mainstream living. Interestingly, this situation triggered some very intense discussions in the community about how to prioritise health and collective care in a different way than what was being imposed by the government.
"During COVID, the community found itself in a very safe spot: they had each other, they had crops in the field so they didn't need to line up in the supermarket"
In 2021, when things were getting back to normal in the outside world, the community received a proposal from the metropolitan area of Florence, which had still not succeeded in selling the land through the public auction. Their new idea was to renovate the estate in a participatory process with the community, using €50 million in economic support from the European Union as part of the country’s post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) to support food commons."
What was the municipality’s intention?
"The following period was very curious. It was difficult for the community to untangle the intentions of the political actors and the goal of the proposed policies. The fact that the money came from the European Union was problematic, as within the community there is a lot of criticism of this institution. At the same time, they find the EU better than the fascist Italian government. It was not clear whether the state was using this funding to gain control of the Farm without Masters and get some free PR, or whether it genuinely hoped to expand and support local food systems.
The community had different opinions about the proposal: some saw co-designing as an opportunity to engage in and influence the process, and others felt complete distrust, particularly due to the huge sum of money being proposed. After long discussions, the community decided to participate in the government’s plan, feeling that their lives and livelihoods at Mondeggi were at stake if they stepped out. Some community members however, disillusioned by the top-down process, ultimately chose to leave.
The government sent a committee of technical people – civil engineers, architects and an economist – to assess the condition of the estate. This says a lot about the public authorities’ vision; their focus was on the buildings and productive facilities instead of the natural and human communities. During the proposal drafting process, the community often found that the specific wording they had chosen to convey the social and non-profit essence of the project was systematically erased or weakened by the technical committee. So the process has not been without challenges."
"This is an important example of community-led political practice"
Currently, the Mondeggi community and the metropolitan government of Florence are working on what the mayor calls “the renaissance of Mondeggi". This is the first time in Italy that any party in the political spectrum has supported an initiative like the Farm without Masters. After a long period of ambiguity, the remaining Mondeggians are cautiously optimistic that their commoning initiative can continue to take root and spread.
In the absence of official policy to protect such spaces and the threat that governments may try to intervene, how can initiatives like this survive and multiply?
"Over the years, due to the uncertain situation, Mondeggi community members focused on cultivating a different kind of stability through informal networks. Many grassroots groups view Mondeggi as an important example of political practice. They have created a strong community of informal policies and ideals without organising conferences or creating vertical structures. So in the event of an eviction, for example, the Mondeggi community could count on a massive popular response from the very wide peasant network they have built over the years. This is something that formal organisations, political parties, more traditional social movements, and even local authorities cannot replicate, as it is based on a completely different way of thinking and acting.
Size is also important for the long-term viability of such experiences. If communities involve too many people, at some point they will stop functioning. I think that staying small is a strength of commoning initiatives rather than a limitation; it is another way of thinking about individual relations within communities. Cultivating this intimate dimension is important, and it does not mean being isolated from the outside world."
The Farm without Masters hopes to show that establishing some kind of autonomy – be it with food, with other natural resources, or with different degrees of commoning – can answer most of the challenges that we face today, even in the Global North. We have learned an important way forward: people coming together and using their imaginations to create spaces of autonomy.
Interview by Ann Doherty, a farmer and educator in the Netherlands and an editor of Rooted magazine. Contact: rooted@cultivatecollective.org
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This article is part of Issue 1-2024: Policies for Agroecology
