The current construction of the European Green New Deal is often fed by idyllic representations of countryside life. The lecture shows instead how neo-rurality, rather than being simply a mere, local, and more sustainable form of productive life is actually a semantic and political battlefield inhabited by conflicting discursive construction of nature. The talk analyzes neo-rural discourses emergent in the decades 2010-2020 and their socio-political and institutional articulation in a specific area of southern Italy, the so-called urban desert. This case study shows conflicts and convergence between different neo-rural discourses, their specific articulation of nature, and their outcomes in the socio-political construction of the EU green capitalism. Looking at the intersection between epistemic transnational networks, crafted specialties, technologies of government, and commodity-sign productions, I analyze sustainability policies, rural development projects, and quality food promotion as new fields for value extraction and territorial dispossession hegemonized by expert discourse(s).