Producers in Sicily

With the aim of continuing to form convictions about the sectors, in September 2021, Julien and Quentin, the two founders of The Barn, as well as Tom, our fruit and vegetable range manager, went to Sicily to meet our producers. 

After visiting many Belgian projects, it is also important for us to meet our partners across Europe. The maturity of the project has therefore allowed us to make a second trip beyond our borders. The idea is to get a feel for the realities encountered on site as well as the different agricultural models used and the values shared with our partners. It also allowed us to see the history and evolution of organic farming in Sicily. In practical terms, for the organisation of this trip, we worked with two of our partners. In order to facilitate our logistics for supplying our shops, we need to work with distributors to import our products. These distributors create the link between the local producers and our shops. We therefore spent three days with Francis, the founder ofEcodalwith whom we went to see about ten producers. We ended the week accompanied by Carlo, producers' agent and co-manager of Te lo porto bio and local contact ofInterbio.

Friday 17 September: Landing in Palermo.

Saturday 18 September: Acclimatisation day: visit to Palermo and surrounding towns.

Sunday 19 September: We head for the south-east of Sicily where most of our producers are located. We meet up with Francis, our partner from Ecodal, to start the visits together on Monday morning.

Monday 20 September: First day of visits: we get straight into the swing of things by visiting the first farms. We start by meeting Massimo, who runs Ferrera, in Marina di Ragusa. 

• Ferrera went organic in 1997. They have 12 hectares of greenhouses and 7 hectares of open ground. It is run by two brothers who took over the farm from their father. During the high season, they hire about 30 employees to help with the harvest. They mainly produce aubergines, peppers and courgettes. Like many, they work with a system of soil rotation to prevent diseases from accumulating on their land. Fun fact: after some harvests, they have a partnership with the village shepherd who brings his sheep for a week to the greenhouses. They feed on the remains of the plantations. This is a natural way to clean and fertilise their soil while providing food for the sheep.

We then moved on to meet Agro Viva in Marina di Acate.

• Agro Viva, a cooperative launched in 1995, has 20 producers who work on 30 hectares of greenhouses (only unheated) and 20 hectares of open ground. 10 hectares belong to the cooperative. They mainly produce tomatoes but also peppers, aubergines, courgettes, beans, celery, Chinese cabbage and kohlrabi. Their location is ideal as they are close to the sea. The producers in the cooperative are quite stable. The price is very important for the producers. The cooperative always tries to find the right balance between what the producer wants to do and the market demand. The cooperative also supports the producers if they have financial problems, for example through pre-financing.

We were particularly impressed by the meeting with Gian Franco, producer and active member of the cooperative, who himself started organic in 2001. We had the opportunity to share a meal with him and he shared with us his experience on the interest for producers to work in cooperatives. 

One of the things we learned was that the majority of Sicilian producers need to form a cooperative in order to be able to sell their products under the best possible conditions. The cooperative provides technical assistance that accompanies the farmers in the field and logistical assistance that groups and centralises the preparation of orders and deliveries. For logistical, financial and technical reasons and to face a competitive market, as well as to enable them to sell their products under the best conditions. 

We ended the day in Saro at Bio Natura, one of the pioneers of organic farming in Sicily.

• Bio Natura started its activity in 1986 when they had only one or two hectares. Today they produce many varieties on 120 hectares of land, 25 hectares of which are under glass and 80 hectares in the open. They sell 70 % of their own produce and buy the rest from other small producers in the area to help them sell their produce. We were delighted to discover that we share Bio Natura's zero waste philosophy, for example they have set up a project to reuse their unsold vegetables by producing dried tomatoes.

We end the day rich in these first meetings and motivated for the rest of the week.

Tuesday 21 September :

During this day, we had the opportunity to meet two other important actors: Natura Iblea and Agrinova.

• Natura Iblea started as an organic farm in 1988 and became a company in 2000. The project now consists of about 200 hectares of land but also works with various smaller producers. They produce over 20 varieties of fruit and vegetables. We were impressed by the vision of their project to feed people with healthy products, while trying to leave the land as they found it! 

We felt that respect is at the heart of their approach. Respect for the land, for its employees and for its customers. Several projects caught our attention directly. For example:

1. With 2 people working full time on innovation, they are developing new packaging for their products to limit the use of plastic packaging. 
2. They also have a small organic shop which aims to make organic food accessible in the region. In this shop, they have even created a small canteen and offer daily menus made from unsold food.
3. During the covid crisis, they also set up a school support programme for employees' children by providing, among other things, reconditioned computer equipment.

In short, a very nice meeting.

We ended our first part of the trip by meeting Andrea Capello, a producer of carrots, fennels, artichokes, courgettes, onions and beans, among other things. We also had the opportunity to meet Francesco, an agricultural engineer working in the Agrinova cooperative, which has 60 producers on 400 hectares. They mainly produce citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, mandarins...) but have recently started to produce avocados.