Harvard Farmers Market

At lunch today, a friend who lived in Italy for several years shared a great story…

Parmigiano-romano cheese takes loads of hard work and two full years to mature. While the cheese wheels sit in giant vaults awaiting their day of infamy, Italian cheesemakers must still feed their cattle, pay wages, mortgages, taxes and the like. So what’s a poor cheesemaker to do for two years while his cheese ages?

The Italian banks have a solution ~ The cash-for-cheese loan scheme. Here’s how it works: The farmers borrow money from the banks to get them through the two-year wait period, and the wheels of cheese become the collateral.  The loans are cheap, and it allows farmers to keep their businesses moving forward while their cheeses harden.  The banks, once the loan is given, take over care of the cheese wheels, turning them once or twice a week and checking for any gone soft.   The BBC reports the vault of one bank in Northern Italy has 300,000 wheels of cheese as collateral worth over 2 million dollars!

This ‘one-way’ bartering system seems to work for everyone, and most importantly helps to sustain local agriculture. The lesson: when it comes to helping keep things local, think outside of the cheese-box.