Farming in Italy is not easy, especially for those with small quality productions.
Unforeseen events, difficulties in the marketing phases, organizational limitations increasingly lead small, valuable agricultural entrepreneurs to find themselves in difficulty and, sometimes, to sell their company.
In this article we want to briefly describe the daily challenges of agricultural entrepreneurs and tell how Boniviri wants to support them.
In Italy, small farmers producing extra virgin olive oil suffer from adverse conditions such as rising costs, risks related to climate change and the difficulty of marketing their products at a fair price.
For these reasons they are often led to abandon agricultural activity and, sometimes, to sell their land.
This is demonstrated by the decrease in the number of agricultural companies (-28% compared to 2013) and by the increase in the average utilized agricultural area (UAA) of the company, which went from 8.4 in 2013 to 11 hectares in 2016.
The challenges faced by small agricultural enterprises are linked to factors such as increased management costs (e.g. processing costs), the difficulty of finding quality manpower, and the difficulty of accessing credit.
Added to these are exogenous factors such as climatic risks and the incidence of extreme weather events (for example, hailstorms, heat or cold waves) and the increase in infestations.
However, many agricultural companies find it difficult to access safe and profitable sales channels, often finding themselves forced to sell their products to intermediaries.
In this context, Boniviri aims to safeguard small, valuable Italian farms by making them prosperous and sustainable, providing them with economic stability and strengthening their skills in terms of sustainability and productivity.
To do this, Boniviri is committed to offering partner farms a new sales channel, joining forces to present themselves on the market with a high-quality product that is attentive to sustainability practices.
In this way, it is committed to remunerating the work of partner farms with a fair price for each liter of oil, in line with the best quality and work practices.
Finally, Boniviri intends to offer agricultural companies methodological and training support, through:
- A digital management tool dedicated to agricultural companies capable of measuring their productivity and sustainability practices.
- Dedicated support activities from the Boniviri team throughout the production phases and opportunities for methodological comparison with other companies in the area.
- The adoption of a sustainability and quality protocol for agricultural companies.
- Through this approach, for Boniviri the partner farms are not suppliers, but travel companions.
