ROME - Over 4 out of 10 Italians (44%) grow fruit and vegetables in urban gardens, terraces and vegetable gardens driven by the economic crisis generated by Covid but also by the desire to spend more time outdoors after the long weeks of lockdown and restriction measures against the pandemic. This is what emerges from a Coldiretti / Ixe 'survey that photographs a new tendency on the part of citizens to use every green space available to guarantee themselves healthy food to offer themselves and others.
"The economic crisis caused by the Covid emergency - notes Coldiretti - in fact re-evaluates the function of the" war "gardens when crops spread in Italian, European and United States cities to guarantee food supplies".
The "victory gardens" of the United States and the United Kingdom are famous, where 1.5 million allotments were grown in 1945, meeting 10% of the demand for food. But the Italian war gardens born in the center of large cities are also famous to ensure that, in observance of the imperative of the Duce, "there was not a strip of uncultivated land". The images of the Roman Forum and Piazza Venezia transformed into wheat fields and the harvesting carried out in Piazza Castello, the center and heart of Turin in every era, are in the annals of history.
"Now times have changed and the economic reasons are added to those of wanting to spend more time outdoors in contact with nature after months of forced closure at home. A trend that - continues Coldiretti - is also accompanied by a different use of private greenery with the gardens and balconies of the houses that more and more often give way to vegetable gardens for the "do-it-yourself" production of lettuce, tomatoes, aromatic plants, chillies, courgettes, aubergines, but also peas, beans, fava beans and chickpeas from collect if necessary ".