There are heroes who do not wear cloaks to fly, but arm themselves with shovels, rakes and seeds to restore dignity to the urban landscape. In the Pavia area, the ethical parable of an enigmatic citizen who decided to declare war on social degradation and selfishness through agriculture and sharing is arousing enormous curiosity.
He calls himself Piantaman, he is 49 years old and acts protected by a strict anonymity to avoid prejudice, even going so far as to wear a mask during his ecological blitzes. Its mission is to identify public flowerbeds, uncultivated spaces or road roundabouts forgotten by institutions and transform them into small urban gardens available to the community, where anyone can freely harvest what the land produces.
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The trademark in the land and the challenge of bookcrossing vegetables
By scrolling through the videos and images published on his highly followed social pages, it is possible to monitor the fruits of this incessant underground work. Fields of melons, courgettes and watermelons are sprouting where previously only brushwood reigned. Each intervention is marked by a real trademark, a company logo planted in the ground to certify the passage of the green champion.
The project is constantly evolving and aims to structure a food and educational solidarity network that actively involves even the littlest ones. The next initiative in the pipeline involves the creation of special wooden pallets designed for a sort of solidarity exchange of vegetables, in which local producers will be able to place their agricultural surpluses and citizens who are less well-off or in economic difficulty can freely draw on for their daily sustenance.
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Risk management and recruitment of Pavia university students
The “botanical guerrilla” action develops mainly in the vast rural area of eastern Lomellina, covering the territorial band between the municipalities of Vigevano and Garlasco in the province of Pavia. The imminent goal is to expand towards the provincial capital, where Piantaman intends to involve students from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Pavia, many of whom are already his faithful digital supporters.
Despite the formal illegality of the land occupation, the masked farmer does not fear legal repercussions or neighborhood disputes for trespassing on private areas. To facilitate the survival of the seedlings, the champion distributes large tanks of rainwater on site, encouraging passers-by to actively cooperate in the irrigation of the self-managed fields, demonstrating that altruism and mutual trust can generate the best fruits.
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