A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #24-26 - Cultivating Self-Management: La Ràkene in Alta Murgia (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Whenever self-management is discussed, someone inevitably objects: "Nice 
ideas, but they don't work in practice." Yet, if you visit Ruvo di 
Puglia, you encounter a community that collectively organizes 
agricultural work, shares economic risks, makes decisions through 
assemblies, builds shared infrastructure, passes on knowledge, and 
distributes the harvest.
It is not a utopia-it is a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) 
initiative called La Ràkene.
The name itself tells the story of the project. In the local dialect of 
Ruvo, *ràkene* refers to the large net spread beneath trees to catch 
falling olives and almonds. You cannot spread or gather it alone; it 
requires multiple people. It demands coordination, mutual trust, and 
teamwork.
It is a simple yet powerful metaphor. A community functions in exactly 
the same way.

Forty-five families and three farmers cultivate a vegetable garden 
spanning approximately 4,500 square meters together. However, anyone who 
comes to La Ràkene soon discovers that the vegetables are only part of 
the story. Some build dry-stone walls, others learn to save seeds from 
local varieties, take courses in agroecological gardening, participate 
in political ecology workshops, organize activities for children, or 
prepare the weekly produce boxes. The garden becomes a space where 
relationships, knowledge, and shared responsibilities are rebuilt.
This is where La Ràkene ceases to be merely an agricultural project and 
becomes a political endeavor.
CSAs stem from an idea that is as simple as it is radical: food is not a 
commodity like any other. That is why participants do not simply buy the 
harvest; they help finance the farming season, discuss production 
choices, and share costs, benefits, and even the risks associated with 
the harvest. If drought destroys part of the crops, the farmer does not 
bear the cost of the crisis alone; the community bears it.
This logic runs counter to the prevailing one.
While the market offloads risk onto those who do the work and 
concentrates profits elsewhere, a CSA redistributes responsibility and 
builds collective security.
This initiative emerged at a time when Italian agriculture is facing a 
profound crisis. Large-scale retail chains drive down prices, the 
climate crisis makes every growing season increasingly uncertain, costs 
are rising, small farms struggle to survive, and entire legacies of 
farming knowledge risk disappearing.

The question, then, is not whether we should continue producing as we 
always have. The question is whether we can organize ourselves differently.
But Ràkene's response also holds a lesson that is highly relevant to the 
anarchist movement.
For too long, we have allowed the term "organization" to be associated 
with hierarchy, bureaucracy, and command. Yet, a community that seeks to 
produce its own food together cannot rely on mere spontaneity. 
Assemblies are needed. Crop planning is needed. Budgets must be 
discussed. Work must be distributed. Mutual commitments must be made.
In other words, we need to organize.

The alternative to the market is not improvisation.
It is self-organization.
Ràkene demonstrates that this is not a theoretical formula, but a daily 
practice.
That is why the vegetable garden alone is not enough.
Alongside the crops, there are agroecology courses, seed workshops, 
political ecology meetings, artistic activities, initiatives for 
children, dry-stone wall building, and opportunities for dialogue with 
other local associations.
A community does not merely reproduce food.
It also reproduces the knowledge, culture, and relationships without 
which no collective endeavor can endure over time. The "Piantagrane" 
fundraising campaign-supported by an illustration by Zerocalcare 
inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's phrase "The means are the end"-arose 
from the need to create shaded areas, upgrade equipment, and make the 
vegetable garden more resilient to the effects of the climate crisis. It 
is a campaign worth supporting.
But it is even more important to ask why initiatives capable of 
producing healthy food, protecting biodiversity, and fostering dignified 
work and social connections must rely on crowdfunding, while the system 
continues to prop up an agricultural model increasingly dependent on 
mass retail, financialization, and labor exploitation.
Ràkene is not a model to be copied.

Every territory must find its own crops, forms of cooperation, and 
tools. Yet, it would be a mistake to view it as an exception.

Community-Supported Agriculture initiatives are growing in Italy. They 
remain few in number, fragile, and often little-known. Yet, they point 
to a clear direction: bringing food production back within the realm of 
trust, shared responsibility, and self-governance.
Perhaps this is the most important lesson we can learn from the Alta 
Murgia region.
The alternative will not emerge solely in public squares or at 
demonstrations. It must also take shape in fields, schools, workshops, 
community centers, and neighborhoods-wherever men and women decide to 
organize themselves to reclaim parts of their lives from market logic 
and build social institutions founded on mutual aid.

Ràkene offers no ready-made formulas to copy. It demonstrates that 
self-organization is not a principle to be proclaimed, but a practice to 
be built. A vegetable garden, a cooperative, a community center, a 
mutual aid fund: every territory will find its own forms. The question, 
then, is not whether another world is possible. The question is far more 
concrete: what part of society are we willing to build together, 
wresting it away from the logic of the market?

Totò Caggese

https://umanitanova.org/coltivare-autogestione-la-rakene-in-alta-murgia/
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