Solidale italiano, respectful of people and the land

Organic pasta, olives, wine, beer, tomato sauce and more. “Solidale italiano” supports farmed and handcrafted products that comply with fair trade values.

When you think about fair trade the world’s Southern countries are off the top of your head. As well as coffee and cocoa plantations, tropical fruits and sugar cane. In a virtuous circle of production and marketing of sustainable food that since 1988 provides fair wages and promotes respect for people and the environment, Solidale italiano inserts itself. This is a new project of the Altromercato consortium in collaboration with Aiab, Italian association of organic farming, Slow Food Italia, and the Consorzio di cooperative sociali Gino Mattarelli (Gino Mattarelli consortium of social cooperatives) that aims to support the Italian farming and handcrafted products that comply with fair trade’s values.

 

“Not only does the crisis of craftsmanship and agriculture today affect farmers and breeders of the so-called third world,” claims the Altromercato manifesto. “Today the crisis also strikes Italian small and family-owned farms and workshops, where there is a growing difficulty in keeping farms, cooperatives, processing workshops going. Even in Italy, day after day, many small high quality companies that are environmentally and socially responsible are crippled by rising costs, unreachable credit and improvident development policies”. Solidale italiano was born with this scope: to support Italian farming and handcrafted products through purchase systems geared to pay workers fairly, to strengthen relationships of trust within communities and encourage soil care through sustainable farming methods.”

 

To have the Solidale italiano trademark, food items should be produced by prison economies or sustainable agriculture and fully comply with 75 percent of the project’s basic requirements.

 

Thanks to Solidale italiano fair agriculture and sustainable products grow in areas in which legality is observed and developed, the environment and workers are not exploited, which means on vacant lands that are not exploited nor cultivated by illegally hired workers. This is how organic and biodiverse excellent products were born. The people who produced them combined production values with struggles for freedom and the respect of the people who cultivate the land. In this context, Altromercato collaborates with the following agricultural cooperatives: Gino Girolomoni in the Marche district (pasta), Consorzio Goel in the Locride region (citrus fruits and oil), I germogli in San Colombano al Lambro, Lombardy (wine), Pietra di Scarto in Cerignola, Apulia (tomato sauce and olives). Libera Terra Mediterraneo produces oil, wine, legumes and pasta made from raw materials grown on the lands confiscated from the mafia.

 

Prison economy besides using raw materials and paying attention to processing, also pays special attention to the personal path of who creates these products. They are made by the organisations that work with or within the reclusion places in Italy and offer, through training and a qualified paid-up work, a chance for redemption to those who create them. These organisations include Pausa Cafè in Saluzzo and Turin (beers), Campo dei Miracoli in Trani (taralli), Divieto di sosta in Saluzzo and Verbania (biscuits) and L’arcolaio in Syracuse (almonds).

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