Agrisofia – teaching sustainability through the wisdom of agriculture
Agrisophia is a new educational venture that explores issues of sustainability through agriculture and connects urbanites to nature. Based in Andania, Greece, Agrisophia pilots models of learning in and with nature that can be replicated throughout southern Europe. Its first projects include a sustainability education program that unites Europeans of diverse expertise to improve circularity in olive oil production, and one to bring urban migrant children into nature.
Local
Greece
Peloponnese, Messinia region
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Thalassa GmbH & Co. KG Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Amadeus Last name of representative: Tzamouranis Age: 15 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Male Nationality: Germany If relevant, please select your other nationality: Greece Function: CEO Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Urbanstrasse 71 Town: Berlin Postal code: 10967 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49176 31147225 E-mail:amadeus@oel-berlin.de Website:https://oel-berlin.de/
Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): @oel-berlin (Instagram)
Agrisofia is a new think-and-do tank based in Andania, Greece that develops and pilots projects that draw on the wisdom (Greek: sofia) of agriculture to educate diverse audiences about sustainability through immersive, nature-based learning. The brainchild of Amadeus Tzamouranis, the Greek-German Director of Thalassa GmbH, a company that sells organic olive products from Andania, this project is an effort to harness the educational potential of the multisensory experience of organic olive oil production, to connect citydwellers to nature, and to drive innovation in the southern Peloponnese thanks to the contributions of those who participate. Our goal is to push agritourism beyond leisure, marshaling its potential to inform, excite, inspire, and raise important questions about sustainability.
All food production is dependent on climate. Agritourism therefore presents a unique opportunity for city-dwellers, divorced from the natural sources of their food, to learn immersively about sustainability and comprehend the threat of climate change. This kind of learning generates an experience which is multisensorial: simultaneously intellectual, aesthetic, physical and emotional, it connects people to nature but also to each other, which solidifies learnings more effectively than didactic classroom instruction. We propose that this novel approach to educating the public about sustainability, by bringing them onto the land, into conversation with producers and enjoying gastronomic experiences, all within an intentionally facilitated pedagogical framework for sustainability, can and should be widely adopted in Mediterranean countries.
Sustainability
Agriculture
Inclusion
Transdisciplinarity
Multisensoriality
The key objectives of this project are to both educate the public about sustainability, and to bring fresh ideas and knowledge about sustainable agricultural and business practices to the region of Messinia. Olive oil production tells the story of sustainability in five acts: harvest, milling, by-products and future technologies, taste, and cooking. We propose to develop a proprietary methodology, based on both the European Sustainability Competence framework and the Framework for Education for Sustainability produced by a team of European researchers last year, that uses each of these acts to meaningfully educate a diverse range of audiences about sustainability.
Agrisofia’s flagship program is exemplary with regard to sustainability because it recognizes the value of different kinds of knowledge, and facilitates knowledge exchange: in partnership with Andania Gaia, the olive mill in Andania that processes Thalassa’s olive oil, we plan to gather a diverse group of Europeans, each expert in a different discipline (e.g. business, agronomy, innovation, social care, green energy), in the “natural classroom” of Andania’s olive groves to first learn about sustainability issues through the lens of oil production, and then marshal their knowledge and experience to generate new ideas for making use of the many by-products of the production process. In this program, learning is a two-way street: citydwellers learn from an immersive, enriching, multisensory experience in nature, and the Messinia region learns to innovate from their transdisciplinary expertise.
Agrisofia's key objective in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience is to produce a coherent, compelling and accessible methodology for educating the public about sustainability that awakens and engages body, mind and all five senses, uses design thinking and creative facilitation to ensure a quality experience, and generates positive emotions through mindful connection to nature, culture, and other people. We propose to use design thinking, and more specifically Future Food Institute’s framework for Prosperity Thinking, which embeds human and planetary boundaries from the beginning of the design process, to help us design our innovative sustainability education methodology.
We believe strongly in the unique value and transformative potential of immersive, nature-based learning experiences, precisely because they arouse emotions and activate the body and mind in a way that is different from the transmissive learning format of classroom education. The methodology that we propose to design is anchored in a multisensory, 360° experience of beauty – beauty in nature, in service design, in rich cultural traditions, in elegant ideas, in taste, and in human connection. We are especially keen to cultivate this aesthetic aspect in our program for urban schoolchildren, since they, Greek and migrant alike, often live in clogged urban environments that are not beautiful, and have few opportunities to escape the city and experience nature. Our programs are exemplary in that learning always takes place with the help of one or more creative facilitators, whose role it is to help participants process their experiences in the moment, drawing out lessons from the activities and facilitating meaningful exchanges between different kinds of people.
Agrisofia is dedicated to building an inclusive future for Greece. One of the secrets of olive oil production is that, like other seasonal agrifood products, it relies on the labor of seasonal workers, most of whom are migrants from the Balkans or South Asia. There is considerable racism and xenophobia in Greece, and this spills over into – and is to some extent driven by – agricultural industries, where ugly ethnic stereotypes persist. We see inclusion as a key sustainability issue, not least because the Greek olive oil industry would collapse were it not for migrant workers, and is currently threatened by a severe labor shortage. We intend to make efforts to involve all kinds of farmers and workers in developing and delivering our programs, since we believe that any agro-education initiative must be guided by their experience and savoir-faire.
We are equally concerned about creating opportunities for the children of migrants, who tend to be confined to small apartments and dense inner-city neighborhoods, and may never have traveled outside of Athens or Kalamata. This was the impetus to conceive a program for urban schoolchildren, one which brings them into nature, involves them in the olive harvest, and makes use of the natural classroom to impart key lessons about sustainability. While Agrisofia’s business model remains to be developed, this particular program will be entirely grant-funded, in order to ensure accessibility for all schools and all children. Agrisofia’s emphasis on including migrants, both as consultants/instructors and as participants, is unusual for agricultural initiatives in Greece, and makes it an exemplar in the field of inclusive agritourism.
The idea for Agrisofia emerged from conversations Amadeus has had over the years with both fellow olive farmers in Greece and friends and clients in Germany. Olive farmers in rural Greece are struggling, in part because the younger generation has largely fled to urban centers in search of work, and in part because a great deal of Greek olive oil is sold wholesale to Italy rather than being bottled and exported for retail. They are therefore keen to see the development of new products and services that might provide supplementary income, like agritourism.
On the other hand, friends and clients in Germany have expressed interest in traveling to Greece to participate in the olive harvest, as a way to spend a meaningful, active and enriching vacation. Amadeus has also observed a lot of waste in the oil production process, including leaves and tree cuttings that are burned in the olive groves instead of being used to create new products and generate alternative sources of revenue, as they are in parts of Italy.
Agrisofia is the product of these conversations, and we intend to formally consult all target beneficiaries as we further develop the concept. We anticipate that these consultations will have a meaningful impact on both the structuring of Agrisofia as an organization and the content of its programs, driving iterative change within the model and its methodologies. We believe that ongoing consultation with citizens and civil society is necessary in order to best serve the needs of our community as well as those of participants, and anticipate that some kind of steering committee will be set up in order to regularly advise Agrisofia's project designers and managers.
As an early stage venture, to date only local stakeholders have been engaged in the development of Agrisofia. It is in this sense a grassroots initiative that responds to needs articulated by a local community, especially local olive mill owners and farmers, and demand for a new kind of tourist experience expressed by German clients and friends. The engagement of these stakeholders has been, and continues to be, pivotal in the framing of the activities of Agrisofia, especially as concerns, on the one hand, feasibility and existing resources in the community, and on the other, demand for an alternative agritourism experience.
We plan, in the next stage of the development process, to proactively consult regional, national and European stakeholders, and to swiftly constitute a steering committee that will engage representatives from these stakeholder groups to govern Agrisofia and guide its development. We are committed to finding a governance structure that will accommodate a diversity of voices and perspectives, from the most local to the supranational, in order to build an organization that is efficiently and effectively addressing global challenges through local solutions.
In his role as CEO, Amadeus interacts with a broad range of audiences, from farmers to fellow company heads and food artisans to sustainable farming advocates and practitioners. The project of Agrisofia draws on many overlapping conversations with experts from disparate disciplines, among them: food; regenerative agriculture; engineering; nutrition; Greek culture; hunting and foraging; migration; diversity, equity and inclusion; Mediterranean Diet; tourism and agritourism; sustainable food systems; and of course, olive oil production. Amadeus has been particularly influenced by speaking to other sustainable food brands, including a company that sells dates from permaculture farms, and by discoveries on a recent visit to Fattoria La Vialla, a farm and olive oil producer in Tuscany that conducts agritourism activities. On that visit, Amadeus was introduced to new ideas for making use of the full natural yield of olive farming, including cosmetics and polyphenol shots (akin to ginger shots) made from the waste water that results from pressing olives. This experience led him to see the plentiful “waste” of olive oil production, including leaves, tree trimmings, pressed olives, and water, as dormant resources for the development of new products.
Agrisofia is innovative because it seeks to push agritourism further that it usually goes, using agriculture as a resource for learning rather than simply leisure or commerce. The idea of marrying sustainability facilitation to agricultural and gastronomic activities is relatively new, and to our knowledge has yet to be widely adopted in the Mediterranean region. If it were, southern Europe could become a leader in sustainability education, with numerous positive benefits to economically depressed rural regions, including new jobs, better retention of young people, greater innovation and circularity in farming, more regional and international collaboration in terms of knowledge sharing, and the opening of new markets for the Mediterranean’s many high-quality agrifood exports.
Domestically, Agrisofia could educate a generation of schoolchildren about sustainability, instilling an early understanding of the importance of protecting our natural resources and valuing the work done by farmers, producers and artisans. Agrisofia’s approach is also innovative in that it emphasizes knowledge exchange, recognizing that participants in agritourism might themselves have valuable knowledge to share that could contribute to driving innovation in agriculture. In this way, agritourism becomes a space where learning happens on both sides, with an exchange of ideas leading to meaningful change in industrial and consumer habits. Finally, Agrisofia takes a holistic approach to sustainability by following the entire process of olive oil production from harvest to cooking: this allows participants to observe, experience and understand the linkages between climate and food.
The programs that Agrisofia develops are to be pilots that, if successful, can then be replicated in other rural regions of southern Europe. For example, the flagship program we intend to develop, which welcomes a curated group of visitors who are interested in an active and enriching holiday into the olive groves to learn firsthand about sustainability and then share their expertise, can be replicated at other olive oil processing facilities in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Balkans and France. The Agrisofia methodology, which draws on the wisdom of agricultural knowledge and practice to teach sustainability by engaging body, mind and all five senses, is one that can also be replicated in other agricultural settings with other artisanal agrifood products: cheese, honey, wine, fruit preserves, vegetable pickles, etc. As with the second program we envision, for urban schoolchildren, the Agrisofia methodology can be adapted for other groups of beneficiaries, including, for example, local consumers who seek to make healthier choices when shopping, corporate buyers interested in learning about sustainable products associated with the Mediterranean Diet, and farmers from countries, notably in the global South, where olive oil production is just beginning.
We envision that Agrisofia will develop complementary “train-the-trainer” programs, both online and in situ, that enable us to disseminate our learnings regionally and internationally. These programs will be designed to train local people, in partnership with farmers and producers, to facilitate groups using the Agrisofia methodology. Aspects of the methodology can also be adapted for use in schools that have access to vegetable gardens, or by groups that manage urban and community gardens. The idea, in all cases, is to teach the principles of sustainability through immersive, multisensorial learning in nature-based environments.
Agrisofia addresses several key challenges of our era. Globally, climate change is fueling drought, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophic weather events that threaten humanity, biodiversity and our continued ability to feed ourselves; more and more people now live in cities, where they are increasingly disconnected from the natural world and the sources of their food; climate refugees are driving displacement across the globe; urban environments emit more, pollute more, and waste more than do rural areas; and yet we have no standardized sustainability education in schools or for consumers to teach them about the drivers and impacts of climate change, and why and how to change their behavior.
At the same time, our global economy is increasingly an information economy, with the information sector overtaking agricultural and industrial sectors and farmers walking off their fields in staggering numbers, leaving multinational corporations to grow most of our food. Because we fail to pay attention to the impact of the food system on climate change, the OECD warns that emissions from agriculture could become the dominant source of global emissions by 2050.
It is clear that we, as a global community, need to find ways to make people care about climate change. Agrisofia proposes one possible local solution, by adapting agritourism to become a transformative learning experience that leads to changes in mindset and behavior. Our programs capitalize on documented trends towards, on the one hand, eco- and gastro-tourism, and on the other, the transformation economy: experiences that are authentic, meaningful and occasion a sense of transformation in the consumer. They envision that the most agriculturally productive regions of the globe, among them southern Europe, can and should become leaders in sustainability education by opening their fields, and sharing their wisdom, with urbanites in search of meaning and connection.
