Deal for grass-cutting sheep in Rome

(ANSA) - Rome, May 24 - 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.