In Sicily, for generations, the more common choice was another one: leaving.
Leaving behind the land of one’s grandparents, the fragmented plots, the toil of a trade that seemed to have no future. Going elsewhere to find what the countryside, alone, could no longer guarantee.
In Camporeale, twenty-five years ago, a group of farmers decided to do exactly the opposite. Valdibella was born from that: from the idea that staying to farm the land could once again be a dignified choice, not a sentence. Since then the cooperative has kept betting on the same kind of people: young people who, instead of leaving, choose to stay.
A Grove You Don’t Just Inherit — You Choose It
Antonio Accardo is the youngest in a family of farmers. The son of a founding member of the cooperative, he inherited the family business, but didn’t simply keep it running: he transformed it, betting on biodiversity just as all the other members have done. Today his twenty hectares of vineyards, olive groves, orchards and arable land coexist on the same farm, cultivated according to the same agroecological principles.
It’s not an isolated case. Among the members who grow olives at Valdibella are Vincenzo, Salvatore, Anna Pia and Antonio himself — people who could have done something else, somewhere else, and chose to stay in Sicily and farm organically. It’s a choice you can see in the way they work the land: no synthetic chemicals, with the patience of people who think of the countryside as something to give back to, not just take from.
The Cooperative as Infrastructure
Staying isn’t enough on its own. It takes a structure that makes it possible to stay under the best possible conditions for a worker: an agronomist who follows every crop with the same care, an organic certification already in place, a market already built, a fair price guaranteed upstream.
That’s what Valdibella offers its members: not a contract, but shared infrastructure. Those who join the cooperative don’t have to invent everything themselves — they find a community that has already solved together the problems a young farmer would struggle to face alone: from processing to sales, from certification to training.
That’s why we’re still looking for new hands and new minds today — an agronomist, an olive grower, anyone who loves the land as much as we do. Because every person who decides to stay makes everyone who stayed before them stronger too.
The Quality Born From This Choice
All of this translates into a precise oil: the Cerasuola Extra Virgin, a native Sicilian cultivar typical of the provinces of Agrigento, Palermo and Trapani, the second variety in Italy for total polyphenol content, after Puglia’s Coratina.
A heritage that our members preserve through early harvest, in October, and cold pressing below 27°C. The result is a green-gold oil, medium-to-intense fruitiness, with notes of herbs, artichoke and green tomato, and that bitter, peppery finish that is the sensory signature of oleocanthal, olive oil’s natural anti-inflammatory compound.
This isn’t a label detail: extra virgin olive oil is the only vegetable oil with a health claim approved by EFSA, and Cerasuola comfortably exceeds the polyphenol threshold required to use it. No other vegetable oil can claim the same European scientific recognition.
Every Bottle Carries a Choice
When you taste a Valdibella Cerasuola oil, you’re also tasting this: the work of people who, at a time when leaving would have been easier, chose to stay and farm their own land the right way.
This isn’t marketing. It’s the reason the cooperative has existed for twenty-five years, and the reason it will keep existing for the next twenty-five.
A Way to Start Getting to Know It
In September we’re telling this story, and pairing it with something concrete:
a 5% discount on Cerasuola Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Want to know more? Write to commerciale@valdibella.com
Valdibella — Organic farming cooperative, Camporeale (PA)
