Study title

How proceeds the daily life of those who have taken the step to realize their dream to life in the countryside? This documentary offers an ethnographic eye on the joys, perils and challenges of those who life from sustainable agriculture and food production. Diving deep into the everyday rhythm of a couple of goat keepers, a collective of cheesemakers, a Marxist-inspired beekeeper and an herbal expert, the documentary takes the viewer on a journey through the difficulties of producing and selling products, loneliness and nature, unknown circuits of alternative micro-economies, as well as the incisiveness of contemporary neo-peasant activism as a source of inspiration.With growing concerns over the quality of what we eat, food has moved to the centre of questions over governance and sovereignty. However, in mainstream studies of food and activism, a focus on culture, identity and the creativity of ethical activism still often forecloses the capacity to address broader issues of governance. Following Bourdieu's (2014) call to consider resistance as a lens to understand the evolution of contemporary forms of power, this project investigates innovative political activism relating to the right to certify food. The rapidly growing network of independent small-scale farmers 'Genuinely Clandestine' (GC) throughout Italy promotes alternative, 'participatory self-certifications' of so-called 'genuine' local food chains. Created in 2010 as an ironic 'anti-logo', the label GC has expanded to a national network throughout Italy. With the GC label, groups organise markets, festivals and events selling deliberately local products that do not conform to current food safety regulations. In contrast to depersonalised, top-down certification practices considered as driven by agribusiness interests, 'participatory self-certifications' are set up locally in consumer-producer assemblies. As a particularly rich laboratory of food politics, for decades Italy's cultural capital has been...