Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi on Thursday
presented an agreement the city has reached with farmers
association Coldiretti that features the possibility of using
sheep to cut grass in parks in the capital's suburbs.
The council's environment department has identified 20 green
spaces where farmers will be allowed to cut the grass with their
own equipment to take it away for feed or let the animals graze.
"This agreement aims to enhance the agricultural role of this
city, which has 40 million square metres of green space and 40%
with an agricultural vocation," Raggi said.
"One of the initiatives regards the care of agricultural
green spaces and countryside (on the outskirts), an area that is
often abandoned to its fate.
"It features the cleaning (of the areas) via mechanical means
and via grazing.
"We won't take the sheep to (the parks in) the centre of Rome
but we'll give them back areas that had been taken away from
them - the Roman countryside".
The idea of using sheep to cut grass in parks prompted
ridicule from some critics of Raggi's 5-Star Movement
administration.
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