Over a thousand vine plants cut during the night by unknown persons.
Perhaps an act of vandalism, perhaps a threat or retaliation for the owner of the vineyards, Luigi Stefani, a well-known agricultural entrepreneur from Trentino, former municipal councilor of Mezzocorona and current president of the Trentino land reclamation consortium.
The man filed a complaint with the police.
It happened in Trentino, in the countryside between Mezzocorona and Roveré della Luna, in the Piovi area.
A total of 1,255 Pinot Grigio DOC vines were cut, in two different plots about two hundred meters away from each other.
"They targeted young vines, which are 4-5 years old, using a built-in battery-operated scissors: you can see why there is a clean cut," Stefani told the newspaper l'Adige.
The farmer says that the damage, which amounts to around 15,000 euros, was caused by "someone expert, by people in the trade".
In Trentino the practice of cutting fruit trees for the purpose of vandalism, damage or intimidation is journalistically defined as "wild billhook".
There are many episodes.
In 2019, for example, a farmer from Baselga di Pinè reported to the police the cutting of several vines in his land cultivated with a cross between Teroldego and Lagrein.
Two years earlier, a 55-year-old from Trentino was sentenced to one year and eight months for aggravated damage to a farmer from Val di Non for whom he had cut down almost 200 apple trees after a dispute over payment for some reclamation work.
In 2014, again in Val di Non, in an orchard with around 700 apple trees, 430 were cut, perhaps with shears. Nearby Alto Adige is also no exception: in 2015 - an example above all - it was taken targeted the land owned by the then president of the Eofrut fruit growers' cooperative in Termeno: in that case around 350 apple trees were cut down.
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