Good morning, my name is Francesco Guccione
and, firstly, I want to say thank you to Giuseppe Amato for wanting Nautoscopio here in Palermo
and to Raffaella Guidobono for having me here on TedxPalermo
I'm a farmer
for family tradition and as passionate lifestyle choice
Some years ago, my brother Manfredi and I chose to recover another family tradition that is winemaking
Since we have a wealthy land, we decided to demonstrate the quality of our territory
through a natural wine production based on biodynamic principles
The DNA scientific definition is something difficult for me, and it's not within my competences as farmer
but the philosophical notion is connected with..
as it had this helicoidal form of any human beings on planet
Everyone's genetic memory is stored on DNA and our genetic memory lives in our territories following our habits and shaping social and physical aspects
Freely talking about DNA, I can only state that over the last 50-60 years our tradition, our memory, our DNA...
has been subjected to deep and almost always unjustified modifications.
Before the Second World War, wine DNA was preserved by the territory it was occupying
Method was just one..
Natural products were able to kill vineyard parasites..
In the second post-war, chemistry has deeply modified the intrinsic quality of products
upsetting the structure and multiplying production
and it has resulted in a huge drop in quality
Grapes that were for wine..
were transfered, almost deported to become ingredient for other wines and creating an artificial cycle
Modification trend reached its peak in the 80s
thanks to industrial research, the research for the 'beauty' at any cost
Wine becomes a status symbol of culture based on appearing rather than being
The lack of attention to territory
stressing the importance of grape as it was able to guarantee wine success
and the lack of attention to tradition led to globalized products and to their natural and continuous impoverishment
Just one DNA for all
broken and then assembled by science methods
and by trade laws
impeding a continuous and positive evolution
deforming our future and making it unsuitable for biodiversity
and for the natural beauty each place is able to express
through product diversity, in taste and in differing complexity.
The DNA of our products has to be preserved
Living things evolve naturally over the centuries
a violent and arbitrary change is an abuse
In order to defend richness and memory of our land we have only one chance
to embrace and achieve sensible farming
through new knowledges
necessary for human and environmental respect
valid over the years.
If we respect our products' DNA, we build a new society based on territory, farming and all available resources
Globalization can't be products uniformity
but rather it has to be conceived as the possibility to convey to everybody tastes and memories of our products
by means of new infrastructures and modern technologies
Today, we are lucky
We can know products from everywhere
and try to have knowledge of territories and people living there
but we must be forward-looking people
in order to recognize business mystifications
and to recognize a no vision policy
The exaggerated research towards success at any cost can cancel micro-territory culture
Villages are empty and memory gets lost among identical products
insignificant products and with no identity
So, tradition gets lost in the mists of plains where people move to, leaving behind hills and mountains
where, maybe, it's more difficult to produce but where the product is unequaled
Production is greater in plains
Everything is highly mechanized and brutally intensified
but parasites and diseases increase too, and establish quickly in the field of a crop
However, solution is found in an exaggerate and dangerous use of chemistry.
Respecting DNA, this is the necessary difficulty we are facing today
The helicoidal chain of our native land contains all the information necessary to our wealth.