This video from the BBC shows “how farms confiscated from Sicily’s mafia are providing food and wine, helping to fight crime and providing a future for a new generation on the island.”
The project, a not for profit farming operation called “Libera Terra” (which translates as “Free Land”), was made possible by an Italian member of Parliament killed by the mafia in 1982, Pio La Torre. He was a Sicilian and communist who believed the best way of taking on Cosa Nostra was by seizing its assets, including its farm land.
Decades later that law is the way in which thousands of acres of citrus groves, wheat fields and vineyards have been placed in the hands of farming co-operatives. Libera Terra is the main organisation helping to turn this seized land into a food and wine business, create jobs and give young Sicilians a way of improving the island’s future.
