C.A.N.A.P.A.: Coltiviamo Azioni per Nutrire, Abitare, Pulire l'Aria (Cropping up actions for feeding, for living and for cleaning air)

The action aims at reintroducing and re-thinking hemp cultivation, with the purpose of sustainable recovery of highly polluted agricultural land surrounding ILVA, the huge steel plant in Taranto (Italy). Hemp (Cannabis sativa) can be used to reclaim the soils using an innovative, eco-friendly and low-cost technique called phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is the direct use of plants, and their associated microorganisms, to stabilize or reduce contamination in soils, sludges, sediments, surface water, or ground water. Hemp is suitable to be used to recover soils, since it easily grows under different pedo-climatic conditions, hemp can be re-introduced in current cropping systems. Hemp produces high exploitable biomass for the non-food sector. For this reason several experiments have started in order to test industrial hemp and the real ability to recover soils. The experimental data actually encourage to use hemp to reclaim soils contaminated with heavy metals, dioxins, PCBs. It would be necessary to extend the test for collecting definitive data on its effective use to remediate contaminated soils with inorganic and/or organic pollutants.