Among the Fai assets there is now also an organic farm: “It will be a model of sustainable cultivation”

For the first time, a productive agricultural company becomes part of the FAI Assets – Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano: this is Villa Caviciana, an estate of over 140 hectares extending between the municipalities of Grotte di Castro and Gradoli (VT), and was officially presented today Friday 24 February 2023 at the XXVII National Conference of Volunteers and the FAI Delegates, entitled “Let’s take care of the landscape, cultivating it”, which is held for the occasion in Viterbo, at the Teatro dell’Unione, until 25 February.

Villa Caviciana extends on the northern shore of Lake Bolsena, in front of the Bisentina Island with 20 hectares of vineyards, 35 of olive groves and 86 of woods and pastures: a piece of historic rural landscape typical of Tuscia, and an organic farm that produces oil, wine and honey. It was founded in 1989 by a couple from Dusseldorf, to whom the Fritz and Mocca Metzeler Foundation is now entitled, who donated it to FAI to be taken care of, today and for the future, preserving and enhancing this heritage for the benefit of the community .

The FAI has entrusted its management to a company of agricultural entrepreneurs, but as owner it will closely monitor both cultivation and production, assisted by a Committee of Guarantors. It is a new undertaking for the Foundation, which has accepted the donation because it offers the opportunity to protect a historic landscape while maintaining its productive agricultural vocation. It is yet another way of fulfilling its mission of protecting the Italian cultural heritage, of which the landscape is a fundamental part, as stated in article 9 of the Constitution.

“We don’t become farmers to produce – affirms the President of the FAI Mark Magnificent – but we want to demonstrate, through the direct experience of owning a farm, that in order to protect and enhance the Italian landscape, which is mostly rural, it must be cultivated, and therefore made to produce”.

The FAI already takes care of olive groves and vineyards in its Assets, but as part of historic landscapes or gardens, of which the original aspect must be preserved more than the productive vocation. Villa Caviciana, on the other hand, is and will be a real productive farm: a model in which to implement, and from which to promote, traditional but also innovative principles and cultivation practices, which are ecologically and economically sustainable.

Villa Caviciana is an opportunity to expand FAI’s field of action: from historic monuments and gardens, from villas, castles and palaces, to a large portion of the landscape, which equally needs to be restored, managed and enhanced, and agriculture is the human activity that has always shaped and maintained it, or taken care of it. The landscape in Italy is historically, and still substantially, rural, and rural civilization is a founding part of the country’s culture and tradition. Villa Caviciana is thus an opportunity to tell the crucial role of rural civilization in the protection and enhancement of the landscape, recovering and enhancing ancient knowledge and local traditions, which today are confronted with a profoundly changed scenario: from the climate crisis to the ecological transition, from abandonment of the country’s rural areas to support policies for farmers, to be recognized today, even economically, no longer only as producers, but also as guardians of the landscape.

“A cultivated landscape is a protected, protected and maintained landscape which preserves identity and vitality, which enhances the intertwining of history and nature, and which today can offer extraordinary benefits to the health of the environment and to our health”, says Daniela Bruno , FAI Deputy Director General for Cultural Affairs. “We have entitled the next national conference to be held right here in Viterbo, in the heart of Tuscia: Let’s take care of the landscape, cultivating it. We want to take a step forward, showing the public, institutions and citizens that FAI is doing its part to protect the landscape, offering a concrete example, with our feet on the ground and our hands on the ground”.

The new property in Tuscia, the seventy-first in the history of the Foundation, will be the instrument for FAI a new cultural communication, because agriculture is culture, and promoting good agriculture is equivalent to promoting landscape care, environmental protection and our health, which are everyone’s heritage.

Villa Caviciana is due to the love of the German spouses Friedrich Wilhelm and Monika Metzeler for the Italian landscape. He a lawyer from Düsseldorf, she an art collector, they acquired the lands that make up the estate starting in 1989. Their dream, which arose after a holiday in Italy, was to build a farm of high quality organic products, and the hilly area between the municipalities of Grotte di Castro and Gradoli, with gentle slopes, fertile soil of volcanic origin and the mild climate of the lake, seemed the ideal location. But the lands were abandoned and uncultivated, reduced to a shapeless patch of spontaneous vegetation. The Metzelers, little by little, realized a modern and efficient estate, precociously “organic”, with its own oil mill and cellar, built from the ground up, and equipped with the best machinery and personnel and spaces for the production of oil and wine. Friedrich and Monika Metzeler called two great German architects, Bernard Korte And Wolfgang Doring, to draw greenery and buildings respectively. The cellar has a minimalist architecture, essential but refined, with a sophisticated recovery of local materials, such as tuff, which warms the facades with geometric lines. In the shapes we read the search for functionality, but also the desire to fit discreetly into the landscape, which is the absolute protagonist of this story, as demonstrated by the panorama of the lake which can be enjoyed from the cellar, framed by the vineyard and a tidy lawn, dotted with contemporary works of art, which fades into the olive grove.

“When we first saw Lake Bolsena coming from Orvieto, we felt the irresistible attraction of this magnificent landscape. Love at first sight has been transformed into a majestic estate with vineyards” declared the Metzelers who arrived in Tuscia. And it shows that it is a happy place, thought of and loved. Reason and feelings today led the Fritz and Mocca Metzeler Foundation to donate Villa Caviciana to the FAI, so that the enterprise of this German couple may continue.

“When we were faced with the question of how to preserve my parents’ work and how to carry on Villa Caviciana according to their wishes, that is by offering the maximum possible benefit for the community” he explains Henning Baumeister, Mocca’s son and Vice President of the Fritz and Mocca Metzeler Foundation, “we discovered the existence of the FAI and its objectives and understood that there was a solution. It must be said that in Germany, unfortunately, there is no equivalent model”.

Villa Caviciana will be entrusted to the management of professionals: three partners, including Joseph Scalawinemaker for generations, e Osvaldo De Falcoentrepreneur in the branch of the digital economy, who will be supported by a Committee of Trustees chosen by the FAI, made up of scholars and experts in agronomy, agroecology, cultivation and organic production techniques, agricultural economics and innovation, from various universities Italians, with particular presence of the University of Tuscia, excellence in agricultural research internationally recognized.