With post-Covid commodity price increases, the value of Italian alfalfa becomes more understandable. At SANA 2021, on 10.9.21, fodder producers recalled its strengths. Easily summarized in one pattern: reconnect animal husbandry with agriculture and ensure sustainability.
Italian medical herb, the Medi-C-A-Rbon project
The virtues of alfalfa were summarized by the president of AIFE/Italian Fodder Industry, Gianluca Bagnara, in explaining the Medi-C-A-Rbonio project, which we had reported on. (1)
The project is being carried out under the 2014-2020 Rural Development Program of the Emilia Romagna Region and involves 40 alfalfa farms (AIFE/Italian Fodder Industry members and the Reggio Emilia CRPA (Animal Production Research Center) in the role of scientific partner.
The environmental pluses of Italian alfalfa
‘The project aims to highlight and document the environmental sustainability pluses of forages from alfalfa meadows by assessing the contribution that polyannual forages can make to soil carbon sequestration. This will be done by collecting the elements of sustainability that will then also be documented to support an ecological certification: the made green in Italy’, Gianluca Bagnara explains.
Italy imports about 90 percent of protein feed for animal husbandry. ‘This is a figure that should give us pause for thought, especially today in light of the price increases that corn and soybeans, largely imported, are experiencing and that can be quantified as +60%; this means that feed costs exceed 50% of the value of production with an inevitable negative impact on those of livestock farms that see their profitability margin effectively wiped out’.
Alfalfa, toward ecological certification
The math is soon done. Italian alfalfa production produces one-fiftieth as much CO2 equivalent as imported soybeans. It therefore plays a strategic role in terms of sustainability as well as profitability and competitiveness.
An additional major benefit would be (as envisioned by the Medi-C-A-Rbonio project and requested in August) to obtain the Made in Italy green product certification issued by the Ministry of Ecological Transition (which calculates the environmental impact or footprint, Product environmental footprint, Pef, of goods and services).
Useful for the recovery of soils
Over the past 60 years, Italy has lost 12 million hectares of arable land, equal to Piedmont, Lombardy and Sicily combined. Hilly and mountainous lands are the first to be abandoned, with the environmental consequences now known.
‘Instead,mountains and hills represent a heritage to be defended and enhanced, where the production of fodder crops would represent a great plus in terms of production and landscape,‘ stresses Duccio Caccioni, director of the Bologna Agribusiness Center.
Without losing sight of the powerful plus – including marketing – of Made in Italy foods obtained by using green certified Italian forage.
‘This year we will surpass the 50 billion euro mark in agribusiness exports, a figure that only some 20 years ago was no more than half, and which, in my opinion, has all the hallmarks to double in a few years.
But the interesting phenomenon we have been witnessing just recently concerns the growing demand for Italian products from the domestic market as well. The most telling example comes from pasta makers who with increasing insistence are demanding wheat made in Italy. This is also why the production of fodder crops, and alfalfa in particular, should be encouraged, to assert an indisputable value by making it a strategic issue and not a pure marketing issue‘, says Caccioni.
Alfalfa today
There are about 30 processing plants where the alfalfa produced on 90 thousand hectares of land distributed among Emilia Romagna, Marche, Veneto, Lombardy, Lazio, Umbria, Tuscany and Abruzzo is delivered.
AIFE/Filiera Italiana Foraggi accounts for 90 percent of all dried and dehydrated fodder with a production of around 800,000tons/year, or 10 percent of the national total, second in Europe after Spain, which touches 1.3 million tons.
About 60 percent of AIFE/Italian Fodder Industry’s production is destined for foreign countries and the trend is constantly growing; the Association’s aggregate turnover is around 250million euros/year but with the turnover of the entire supply chain and allied industries the figure reaches 450 million. About 13,500 people work there: 1,500 employees, 8,000 farmers and 4,000 contractors and suppliers. Numbers that alone speak to the importance of the sector.
Notes
(1) Medi-C-A-Rbonio stands for accounting of carbon emissions and sequestrations in the production process of alfalfa grass forage to assess its contribution to climate change mitigation. We had reported on the project in Marta Strinati’s previous article, Environmentally friendly alfalfa. The MEDI-C-A-RBON project. GIFT(Great Italian Food Trade), dated 4/13/21 https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/progresso/l-erba-medica-amica-dell-ambiente-il-progetto-medi-c-a-rbonio
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
