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North Italy: Sustainable tomato production
On 9 and 10 September, Sophie Colvine and Madeleine Royère Koonings met with other French and German journalists, as well as food bloggers, for a press tour organized by OI Pomodoro North Italy, in the context of the Tomato Sauce project.
This gave us the opportunity to visit several tomato fields, see the harvesters in action, taste the tomatoes, discuss with the farmers and the producers’ organizations and ask many questions. We also visited one of the many tomato factories from the Parma region, to see the whole tomato processing from start to finish and toured the Tomato Museum in Collechio.
The OI Pomodoro North Italy is the interbranch organization for tomato processing in the North of Italy, comprising the four regions producing tomatoes (Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto and Balzano). In 2023, Northern Italy represented 52% of Italian processing tomatoes and 25% of European processing tomatoes with 39.000 hectares cultivated and 2.8 million tons harvested.
The interbranch organization is presided by Tiberio Rabboni and managed by Maria Chiara Cavallo. Its members are about 2000 farmers, 12 producers’ organizations, as well as 20 tomato processors managing 28 plants, as well as research centers as consultative members. The interbranch organization manages relations between the agricultural production phase and the industrial processing phase. Having a representation from both sides allows the organization to have a shared governance and fair decisions for both.
Slide courtesy of OI Pomodoro da Industria Nord Italia
The aim of the OI Pomodoro, since its creation 2007 has been to promote competitiveness of the supply chain, with a strong focus on sustainability.
That’s the reason for starting the Tomato SAUCE (Sustainable Agriculture Understanding in Central Europe) project, financed by the European Union. It aims to promote awareness of the sustainability of European tomatoes, in particular the high environmental standard guaranteed by all actors of the processing tomato industry in Northern Italy. The campaign’s name: “Grounded in Sustainability – European Tomatoes Grow Full of Purpose” was fully illustrated in the presentation the OI gave us and in our conversations with the farmers and the industry. The target countries of this project are France and Germany, which are major markets for Italian tomato products.
In the production process, sustainability is made possible by:
-The whole production is either integrated (90%) or organic (10%).
-The farmers use precision irrigation (using sensors to detect soil moisture) and the processing plants recycle the water.
-The CO2 emissions are kept low thanks to a short distance between the fields and the processing plants. Thanks to this short distance, the tomatoes are processed very fresh, and transport emissions are much lower than market average.
-Decisions are made on an equal basis between farmers and processors. Framework contracts are used, allowing for fair transactions as well as fair remuneration.
-In addition, harvesting is fully mechanized.
| Integrated production is a specific system of cultivation, still little known to consumers, that favors the use of techniques that ensure a lower environmental impact, a reduction in the release of chemicals into the environment, reducing the dependence of the supply chain on fertilizers and agrochemicals. This ensures greater agricultural sustainability and superior product quality, thereby protecting consumer health. Integrated production also requires crop rotation and water conservation. |
We were able to meet two farmers: Manuela Ponzi, a member of OP AINPO and Francesco Greci, a member of OP ASIPO, as well as their PO representatives: Luigi Sidoli, Vice-president OI Pomodoro da Industria Nord Italia and Director OP AINPO and Robuschi Bernardo, Technician OP ASIPO on their respective fields during harvesting. They explained how their practices allow for a fertile soil, with crop rotations, an integrated farming with little agrochemicals and fertilizers, drip irrigation and the use of sensors which, along with the recycling of water at the processing plants, limits the usage of water. With a 60km average distance between the fields and the processing plants, they are keeping CO2 emissions to the minimum, and the plants are implementing renewable energies such as photovoltaic panels. They were also able to expose directly the special difficulties encountered during the 2024 season largely due to the delays in planting due to a rainy spring which reduced yields from an usual average of 75 to 80 tonnes per hectares to only about 60 to 65 tonnes this year, although quality remains good and brix was at a record level until the end of August.
As part of the Tomato SAUCE project activities, the OI Pomodoro Nord produced a five-part documentary series available on their YouTube channel (see link below). This series will show the commitment of growers and processors to preserving the environment, explain why farmers have chosen integrated farming, describe how they managed to reduce CO2 emissions, look at the innovative water saving solutions, and finally discuss the different aspects of social responsibility.
For more information on this topic, you can visit the dedicated website https://oipomodoronorditalia.it/en/, the LinkedIn page www.linkedin.com/company/oi-pomodoro-nord-italia, and watch the docu-series on sustainability Truemato on their YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@OIPomodoro).
