Commisions

The stories of milk

A Ulloa (Lugo, Galicia)

Location: A Ulloa (Lugo, Galicia)
Period: 2024-2026

"Unravelling naturocultures linked to milk and defending the territory from extractivist threats such as Altri".

In the region of A Ulloa (Lugo), in addition to the problems suffered by the countryside in many other places, there is a threat: the possibility that the company Altri-Greenalia will install a macro-cellulose plant in its territory, which would require an enormous volume of water, eucalyptus trees and land and would emit both waste water and a multitude of polluting gases. In addition to the serious consequences that this project would have on human health and the ecosystem, the Altri plant would compete in terms of resources with the main sector in the area: agriculture and livestock farming, jeopardising the viability of the many ecological projects linked to dairy processing that exist in the region.

Cada vez más personas tienen problemas para digerir y consumir lácteos, por lo que la demanda de leches alternativas a la leche de vaca tradicional, como leche sin lactosa, leche a2a2, leche de avena, de almendra, etc. está en auge. Por otro lado, el auge del consumo de leches vegetales también tiene que ver con el hecho de que las vacas, durante su propio proceso digestivo, emiten mucho metano, uno de los gases responsables del calentamiento global. Los territorios productivos se intentan adaptar a estas nuevas demandas, pero también sufren de una indigestión, aunque sea de otra naturaleza. La suya no es fisiológica, sino más bien metafórica: una indigestión que tiene que ver con el impacto del cambio climático en el sector primario y la falta de entendimiento de cierto ecologismo y la sociedad general con modos de vida que, no solo se encuentran al borde de la extinción y nada tienen que ver con la gran agroindustria, sino que también son potenciales aliados en la lucha contra el cambio climático y la crisis de biodiversidad.

Projects as aberrant as Altri's are only proposed in territories that the interested parties understand as empty and destitute spaces where there is nothing of value to safeguard. The narratives that are constructed around this kind of gaze encourage the view of these territories as huge sacrifice zones, and their inhabitants as collateral victims of progress. Far from this portrait, A Ulloa is a full and lively territory, even more so since the appearance of the Altri threat, which is operating as a revulsive force uniting its inhabitants in a common struggle for this landscape-with-world.

The huge mobilisation that is taking place against the installation of macro-cellulose is an opportunity, through a kind of cultural rearguard, to highlight the value of the ecosystemic and cultural services provided by extensive farming linked to the production of dairy products in the region, as well as to enunciate desirable futures for A Ulloa.

In this way, Os contos do leite will generate spaces for coexistence, exchange, celebration and resistance, opening up to reflect on the contemporary discomforts of the countryside and the challenges we face to ensure food, cultural and economic sovereignty in the future of A Ulloa.