Italian cooperative breathes new life into abandoned land seized from Camorra gangsters

euronews (in English)

Four years ago, the state handed over fields that had been confiscated from the Camorra clan of Casalesi to an Italian social cooperative. Now it's on a mission to restore life to the land.

Transcript

00:00 The land of fires. Once one of Europe's largest illegal dumps just 36 kilometres north of

00:07 the Italian city of Naples. Otherwise known as the triangle of death, this region is infamous

00:13 for its high cancer-related mortality rate. The Camorra criminal organisation used to

00:19 dispose and burn waste here after the regional dumps in the area reached capacity. Once an

00:24 unsupportive wasteland, these fields now breathe new life. And it's all thanks to the Terra

00:29 Felix initiative and the cultivation of the cardoon thistle, which boosts soil fertility

00:34 and the growth of mushrooms. Terra Felix is now on a mission to restore 12 hectares of

00:39 land.

00:41 We are a social cooperative, so we have a moral duty, but we have it in our statute,

00:48 to work to create opportunities for the most vulnerable. So when we think of a project,

00:55 we think first of their involvement in the project and then of everything else.

00:59 But the work doesn't come without its challenges. A few weeks ago, some of the land was set

01:04 alight.

01:05 This is the result of the painful fire that destroyed 7 hectares of Terra Felix. Obviously

01:11 some people don't want this land to be happy again, but the healthy part of the population

01:17 of these territories continues to work on their own land.

01:22 And that's where these state-of-the-art or 4.0 greenhouses come in. Humidity and temperature

01:27 detectors calculate how much water these plants need. The aim is to produce one tonne of mushrooms

01:33 here every month. From replanting the fields to automated greenhouses, the cooperative

01:38 has grown from strength to strength, but it still has a long way to go.

01:43 With our work, we want to make a piece of this road so that the beautiful can emerge,

01:50 so that what Terra Felix can really give can emerge.

01:58 These scorched fields might serve as a setback, but the collective says it is determined to

02:03 see its work through to the end.

02:06 (whooshing)

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