The Heartland Cooperative would like to invite any parties or offers of collaboration, our mission is to deliver a new strategy and solutions in the Majella Orientale area for rural development, trying to influence regional policy, in regards to sustainable tourism, green policy, organic farming and rewilding. We focus on two main areas, inside the village and the open areas bordering abandonment and wild nature, trying to create an area dedicated model for rural regeneration in existing peasant farming contexts.
Our programme is geared towards creating a model for transition of mountain areas into new type of rural business and preservation policy. We believe that under the European green deal and rural policy there is not enough attention to mountain areas as possible solution solvers for climate change problems, and as drivers of sustainability. We also think that the European green deal will fail to meet its targets for climate change, and those also offer a policy opportunity for Abruzzo which is already one of the greenest regions of Europe.
We aim to help the Abruzzo region to become a leader in environmental and climate change transition, focusing less on intensive farming methods that are failing but becoming custodians of sustainability. We believe that mountain farming will need to diversify in the future in order to persist and we aim to explore carbon offsetting schemes as optional to intensive farming, whilst maintaining rural and traditional farming character, helping farmers and private people diversify.
We would like to lead the region into a new type of experiential tourism platforms, that allow small mountain villages to endure and develop through the phase of abandonment without needing to sell or create foreign investment that will change their rural context, we are firm believers that local should not sell their property if at all possible, but find new ways to make them profitable, possibly by creating small working cooperatives that will rent houses in each village to locals first and short staying tourists later.
We feel that European policy in regards to rural areas, especially in Southern Europe has largely failed, in places like in Abruzzo it has created a tendency for reliance on funding. We aim to work with local enterprise and regional level on helping locals navigate the increasing demand of regulation and bureaucracy, yet persist and open up new local business.
Our aim is to create a new interface between mountain farming, specifically Heritage Wheat and Medicinal Herbs and wild nature as a model for rural development in marginal areas, and to help Abruzzo lead the conversation in regards to circular economy, climate change and rural area management.
