In San Floro, the fight against a landfill has given rise to a model company producing ancient grains.

It all began with a popular protest against the construction of yet another landfill, led by Stefano Caccavari, a young Economics and Business student, through a Facebook page against a landfill.

We are in San Floro, in the province of Catanzaro. Here, the town's 600 residents, along with residents of the municipalities of Girifalco, Borgia, Amaroni, Cortale, Settingiano, and Caraffa, in collaboration with the No Bat committee and supported by Legambiente, after a tough battle, managed to obtain from the Region the annulment of the decree granting an area to the company that was supposed to build the Battaglina recycling center, a huge 40-hectare basin capable of holding up to 3 million cubic meters of waste. In its place, thanks to the grassroots movement, the San Floro Family Garden was created.

 

The idea for the Family Garden was simple yet powerful: instead of leaving the fields uncultivated or destined for a degraded area, he divided them into small plots and entrusted them to local families to manage. Here, organic vegetables were grown without pesticides, using natural pest control techniques and with strong community participation.

This had two decisive effects:

On the one hand, it strengthened the social mobilization against the landfill, because the area was no longer perceived as "empty" or expendable, but as a living and productive agricultural space. On the other, it demonstrated that the area could generate economic and social value through sustainable agriculture, making it increasingly difficult to justify the landfill project.

At the head of the movement is Stefano, a highly enterprising young man who doesn't stop at protests, land protection, and his garden. Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign on social media, he manages to purchase an old stone mill and creates Mulinum, a small company that consolidates an agricultural model based on ancient grains and a short supply chain. The grassroots campaign is a resounding success: in just three months, Stefano Caccavari raises over €500,000 and has 101 members.

• Today Mulinum cultivates ancient local grains (Senatore Cappelli, Verna, Farro, Iermano, Maiorca, Rubeum) are grown organically, then directly transform them into finished products, without any intermediate industrial processes. Its members have grown to 220, and two more mills, with the same approach as San Floro, are about to launch, in Tuscany and Puglia.

The supply chain works like this:

• growing wheat in local fields
• grinding to natural stone to obtain wholemeal flours
• production of bread, pizza and baked goods with sourdough and traditional recipes

In addition to production, Mulinum is also an “open” model:

• sells directly (shops and points of sale)
• organizes events, visits and educational activities
• involves local farmers in a shared production network