Download A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement AudioBook Free
Mals, Italy, is definitely known as the breadbasket of the Tyrol. But just lately the small town became known for something else totally. A Precautionary Tale tells us why, adding readers with an unlikely band of activists and a forward-thinking mayor who came up jointly to ban pesticides in Mals by the referendum vote, which makes it the first put on Earth to accomplish such a feat, and a model for other cities and regions to follow. For hundreds of years, the people of Mals had cherished their traditional foodways and kept their local agriculture organic. Their town had become a mecca for vacationers attracted by the alpine landscape, the rural and traditional character of the villages, and the fine breads, wines, cheeses, herbal products, vegetables, and the other conventional foods they produced. Yet Mals is located high up in the eastern Alps, and the valley below was being progressively overtaken by ny producers, heavily reliant on pesticides. As NY crept further and further the region's mountainsides, their toxic spray drifted with the valley's ever-present winds and started to show up on the farms and fields of Mals?intimidating their organic qualifications, as well as their health and that of their livestock. As Ackerman-Leist recounts the local people' uprising, we meet an organic dairy farmer who chooses to speak up when his hay is poisoned by drift; a pediatrician who employed other doctors to safeguard the soil, water, and air that the fitness of her patients is dependent upon; a hairdresser whose salon interactions mobilized the town's ladies in an extraordinarily conceived advertising campaign; and others who jointly orchestrated one of the rare revolutionary successes of our time and influenced a movements now snaking its way through European countries and across the world. The audiobook is narrated with characteristic mastery by Will Damron.
