Istituto Oikos launched 'This is the story of your food' in Italy in 2012, an animated public interest film calling for sustainable, small-scale family farming
Istituto Oikos Makes the Case for Small-Scale Farming in Italy
Istituto Oikos released 'This is the story of your food' in Italy in July 2012, an animated public interest film produced by Latte Creative that calls on consumers to support small-scale family farming and sustainable agri-food systems, directing audiences to the Food We Want platform.
The campaign belongs to a broader 36-month initiative known as the Food We Want project, which began in 2011. According to istituto-oikos.org, the programme operated across eight countries — Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania — and was financed through an EuropeAid budget of €931,146. In Italy, the campaign formed the domestic centrepiece of this international effort, addressing audiences who were increasingly removed from the origins of the food they consumed every day.
Strategically, the film positions Istituto Oikos as an advocate for ethical agri-food systems rather than a conventional environmental organisation issuing warnings. The call to action is constructive: join a movement, visit a platform, change a habit. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 66 out of 100, reflecting solid creative purpose and mission clarity against a backdrop of limited measurable public response data. The campaign's geographic anchor in Italy gives it cultural specificity, while its multilingual Food We Want platform — available in five languages, as reported by istituto-oikos.org — extended its reach well beyond the Italian market.
Istituto Oikos identified a widening gap between Italian consumers and the agricultural systems that feed them. By 2012, industrialised food supply chains had become the norm across much of Europe, making the origins of everyday ingredients increasingly opaque to the people consuming them. The campaign targets this disconnect directly, framing food awareness not as a niche concern but as a matter of public interest relevant to anyone who eats.
The Food We Want initiative provided the strategic infrastructure. According to istituto-oikos.org, five short videos produced as part of the broader programme reached more than 86,000 people in Italy by 2013. That figure speaks to genuine audience penetration for a public interest campaign operating without commercial media budgets. The decision to anchor the work in documentary-style and social experiment formats gave the content credibility, differentiating it from charity-sector communications that often rely on guilt or crisis imagery.
In Italy, the food system carries deep cultural weight. Family farming and agroecology — both themes the campaign promotes, as documented by istituto-oikos.org — connect to longstanding Italian traditions around local produce and regional food identity. The campaign's strategic intelligence lies in mobilising that cultural attachment rather than arguing against it. The Food We Want platform, promoted through the film's call to action, gave socially conscious Italian audiences a concrete next step, transforming passive viewers into potential advocates for sustainable consumption and small-scale farming.
Erik Parys directed and animated 'This is the story of your food', bringing a documentary sensibility to an animated format. The film uses illustration as its primary visual language, with Camilla Falsini credited as illustrator — a choice that lends the work warmth and accessibility rather than the clinical distance that conventional agricultural documentaries can carry. Vera Cavallin composed the soundtrack, and Thomas Giry handled sound design, creating an audio landscape that complements the film's narrative register.
On screen, the film traces the journey of everyday food from its origins in small-scale family farms through to the consumer's table. The animation walks viewers through the production processes and human decisions embedded in agri-food systems, making visible what industrial supply chains typically conceal. The illustrative style — characterful, hand-crafted in aesthetic — signals that what is being described has human authors, not anonymous mechanical processes. This is a deliberate creative position: sustainability is presented as the result of individual and collective choices, not an abstract systemic outcome.
Eugenio Orsi served as creative director, art director, and copywriter on the campaign, with production handled by Latte Creative, Rome. The integration of original music by Vera Cavallin and bespoke sound design by Thomas Giry elevates the film beyond a straightforward informational piece. The result is a single media asset — one film — that carries the full communicative weight of the campaign, requiring its creative execution to function as both emotional argument and practical call to action directing audiences to the Food We Want platform at foodwewant.org.
The Food We Want initiative generated measurable reach in Italy. According to istituto-oikos.org, the five short videos produced as part of the programme reached more than 86,000 people in Italy by 2013. The specific film 'This is the story of your food' recorded 32,824 views, 124 likes, and 4 comments on its primary distribution platform, as reported by istituto-oikos.org. For a public interest film with no commercial media spend documented in available sources, those figures represent a meaningful organic audience.
No verifiable trade press awards or festival recognition for this campaign are publicly available. The absence of awards data does not diminish the campaign's structural effectiveness, however. The film's combination of accessible animation, original music, and a clear call to action — directing audiences to a multilingual platform spanning five languages — demonstrates sound public interest communication practice. The campaign succeeded in doing what most public interest films fail to do: it gave its audience somewhere to go. The Food We Want platform transformed the viewing experience into a potential entry point for ongoing civic engagement with sustainable farming in Italy and across the programme's eight-country footprint.
'This is the story of your food' is an animated public interest film created for Istituto Oikos by Latte Creative and published in Italy in July 2012. It promotes small-scale family farming and sustainable agri-food systems, directing audiences to the Food We Want platform. The film was directed and animated by Erik Parys, with illustrations by Camilla Falsini.
Latte Creative, based in Rome, produced the campaign for Istituto Oikos. Eugenio Orsi served as creative director, art director, and copywriter. Erik Parys directed and animated the film, Camilla Falsini provided illustrations, Vera Cavallin composed the music, and Thomas Giry handled sound design.
According to istituto-oikos.org, five short videos produced under the Food We Want initiative reached more than 86,000 people in Italy by 2013. The film 'This is the story of your food' individually recorded 32,824 views on its primary distribution platform, as reported by istituto-oikos.org.
Food We Want was a 36-month programme that began in 2011, financed through an EuropeAid budget of €931,146, according to istituto-oikos.org. It operated across eight countries including Italy, and its online platform was available in five languages. The initiative promoted family farming, agroecology, and sustainable consumption.
Istituto Oikos used animation to make complex agri-food systems accessible and emotionally engaging. The illustrative style, created by Camilla Falsini, signals human authorship within food production rather than industrial anonymity. This approach distinguishes the campaign from conventional documentary formats and aligns with the organisation's advocacy for small-scale, community-rooted farming.
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