There is a town, hidden in the folds of Cilento, where time seems to have chosen to slow down… Rofrano. Here, where the land is generous, but also severe, the Rofrano cherry tomato was born. A humble, but precious fruit, grown between hunger and dignity.
We came to Rofrano to follow its traces, through the stories of custodian farmers, such as Giuseppe Detta, the first fundamental actor of the seed handover, Sofia Mazzeo and Giovanni Cavallo, who for generations have preserved and cared for the seeds of this special food.
We had the honour of being able to speak with two of them, Giovanni Cavallo and Sofia Mazzeo, who saw in the Rofrano cherry tomato an opportunity for revenge and affirmation.
In 1954, the Italian State launched an investigation in the most isolated and poor towns in the south, to document food consumption in relation to the health status of the population. Rofrano was one of those towns. The data collected through the exact weighing of all the foods consumed by the individual families examined, no less than twice a day, for at least a week, tell of simple, repetitive, often insufficient meals: bread, potatoes, vegetables, legumes, tomatoes and homemade tomato puree. It was a diet made more of ingenuity than abundance, but also of natural balance, frugality and wisdom.
An investigation that tells of the misery and strength of this land, the peasant resources, the poor diet, but full of identity.
Today that story returns, but with a new flavour, no longer poor food, as told in 1954, but a treasure of today. It is the flavour of memory, of resistance, of rebirth. It is the flavour of home.
The Rofrano cherry tomato, small and resistant, was one of the summer certainties and a precious good to be preserved for the winter.
Today, that investigation is not only an historical document, it is a mirror that forces us to ask ourselves: what have we lost? What can we still save? In a small town in Cilento, a tomato becomes the symbol of a silent resistance, of a peasant memory, which has its roots in the earth and in the heart.
Interiew by: Lara Manzi
Video by: Bartole Cetrola
Video Editing by: Bartole Cetrola
Document by: Lara Manzi, Bartole Cetrola
Subtitle ita/eng by: Fabiana Aurilia, Eleonora Ciotola, Lara Manzi
Translation by: Lara Manzi
MedEatResarch – Center of Social Research on the Mediterranean Diet of the University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, head by Marino Niola and Elisabetta Moro
Realized: 05/04/2025
