While conventional agriculture suffers from rising costs and scarce availability of synthetic chemical fertilisers, organic farming is proving more resilient and better equipped to respond to crises. We hear from the experts.
The conflict between the United States and Iran has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a consequent global energy crisis. This vital commercial shipping route in Western Asia carries around 20 per cent of the world's oil and liquefied gas. The situation is having knock-on effects on fuel prices at the pump, on energy bills, and on the cost of food shopping.
What does our food have to do with war? The Strait of Hormuz also channels approximately 25–30 per cent of the nitrogen chemical fertilisers — urea above all — used in conventional agriculture, whose prices have risen by more than 50 per cent, not only due to supply difficulties but also because their production (a synthesis of ammoniacal and ureic nitrogen) is energy-intensive.
This picture reveals the fragility of the global agricultural system — an "absurd situation", as Roberto Pinton, an expert in the agri-food sector, explains to us: "We fall into crisis when a strait six thousand kilometres away is closed because we can only farm with oil. What concerns me most is that there is no sustainable vision whatsoever for agriculture or for energy production in general. We buy liquefied gas from the other side of the world and we don't invest in renewable energy. The approach is purely economic and monetary, and there are no environmental policies — just look at how the objectives of the European Green Deal have been torpedoed by the new EU majority."
Pinton offers a critical analysis of the situation: "We are talking about a blockage of 20 per cent of oil tankers — a contained impact on the total that should not translate into price rises. Instead, there is ongoing speculation on commodity costs." The risk, according to Pinton, is that as industry and large-scale retail try to keep prices low, farmers' profit margins will be squeezed even further. "Over the past 25 years in Italy we have gone from 3.5 million agricultural businesses to fewer than one million — a dramatic collapse."
According to Fabio Brescacin, founder and president of NaturaSì, what is happening stems from a fundamental agricultural problem — one of approach and of how the farming enterprise is conceived: "At the beginning of the 20th century, agriculture took a direction that made farms dependent on external inputs, vulnerable and at the mercy of the oil and chemical fertiliser market. Organic farms, on the other hand, are less affected by the crisis, because organic farming is built on the idea that — and here I quote Rudolf Steiner — 'the farm should seek to come as close as possible to the condition of being a self-contained individuality. The manure and other such things that arrive at the farm from outside should, in an ideal farm, already be considered as a remedy for a sick farm.'"
The consequences of the conflict are not hitting organic and biodynamic farming the way they are hitting conventional agriculture. The former two, while still feeling the effects of rising energy costs on raw materials and on the fuels needed to run machinery, are proving more resilient and independent precisely because they do not use synthetic chemical substances. Instead, they employ techniques such as crop rotation and green manuring, practise natural fertilisation with plants that fix nitrogen in the soil, as well as with compost obtained from farm waste and animal manure — all in keeping with a circular vision of the farm as a closed, secure and independent ecosystem.
"This is a decisive and by no means secondary strength of organic farming. And this historical moment can be an opportunity for organic to grow, but also for conventional agriculture to transition," stated Maria Grazia Mammuccini, president of FederBio. "Every crisis since 2020 has revealed the need for a change of pace to overcome economic, environmental and social impacts, but they have been exploited as tools to block change — when instead the European Union should have been accelerating on the Green Deal."
"Organic and biodynamic farming represent the alternative model for all of Italian agriculture and for the food security of our country," echoes Enrico Amico, president of Demeter Italia, the brand that brings together Italy's biodynamic farmers. "Biodynamic farming chose a different path long ago: no chemical fertilisers, no dependence on urea, ammonia, natural gas and therefore on the shipping routes that transport them. Biodynamic agriculture has been demonstrating for over a century that soil fertility is built through compost, biodynamic preparations, crop rotation and patient care for the life within the soil. This is not romanticism. It is applied agronomy."
"We have always been organic — organic is an integral part of who we are and how we think," says Cristina Rigoni, CEO of Rigoni di Asiago. "Our farming practices support nature's cycles, and the synthetic fertiliser crisis doesn't affect us directly. It also helps to be members of Assobio in Italy and Foam in Europe, which carry our voice and our needs to the institutions."
For Mammuccini, it is essential that the future of the CAP, the Common Agricultural Policy, be oriented towards the agroecological transition of farming systems. According to the president, the solution also runs through research and innovation in biocontrol — active substances of natural origin and microorganisms — an area in which the agrochemical industry is also investing because demand has grown: "Biocontrol is based on monitoring and prevention, but when, for example, a pest attack or a disease occurs, farmers need to be given a tool, because what we cannot afford is for the harvest to be lost and for businesses to shut down. We need to find alternatives to synthetic chemistry, and we need to find them within nature, with the aim of minimising treatment and using the least harmful substances possible."
For president Mammuccini, at European Union level the approval processes for natural active substances must be accelerated so as to make them competitive with chemical ones: "To give an example, pyrethrum is a natural, non-polluting substance, but it is not selective towards beneficial insects such as bees and ladybirds. A non-harmful alternative for beneficial insects exists — quassia amara, derived from a South American wood — but it has not yet been possible to register it in the European Union due to lengthy bureaucratic procedures. Simplification is needed for active substances of natural origin, while we are entirely opposed to any simplification for chemical active substances: you cannot compare orange oil with glyphosate! Chemical solutions have brought us to the current crises: the path of change is not easy, but we must have clear objectives and adequate tools for the agroecological transition, which for us cannot be separated from organic farming."
For Pinton too, simplification around biocontrol is one avenue to pursue — provided we remain firmly opposed to any temptation to further simplify the authorisation procedures for synthetic pesticides — and the goal to aim for is agroecology. "What is certain is that the paradigm of conventional agriculture must change. Even in our country, what is celebrated as excellence in the form of PDOs and PGIs has an enormous environmental, social and animal welfare impact. With half of farmed hens locked in a cage that doesn't even let them spread their wings, eggs will certainly cost less — but where is the quality of the product? The original mission of organic farming, which it must reclaim, was to 'contaminate' conventional agriculture in a sustainable direction: the goal must be to arrive at organic farming in an agroecological key."
"The issue of food is the most important of all, because everyone needs to eat," says Brescacin. "At the tables that matter, the talk is of food security, because this is a problem for all of humanity — one that cannot be solved overnight, but requires a broad, long-term vision. Unlike conventional farming, organic agriculture has no hidden environmental or social costs and is proving more resilient in terms of production. Today, going organic is becoming more convenient for farmers, and we hope it will also become so for consumers, who must play their part in the process of change. We need to become aware, to ask ourselves where the food we eat comes from, how it is made, what it has to do with the geopolitical crisis — and we must support agriculture by recognising the fair price owed to organic producers for the ecosystem services they provide; otherwise, businesses will close. Food is not a given — let's think about this now, before it's too late."
Demeter too hopes that this dramatic crisis may at least finally open up a serious debate on the structural fragilities of industrial agriculture and on the alternatives that are already available and proven. "The crisis we are living through is the crisis of a model that has placed short-term efficiency above long-term resilience, that has replaced natural cycles with global supply chains, that has turned the land into a factor of production rather than a living organism to be cherished. But this crisis is also an opportunity that must not be wasted. We invite institutions, businesses and farmers to look seriously at what biodynamic agriculture has built over time: a system that produces healthy food, that safeguards the soil for future generations, that keeps its costs stable because they are rooted in nature and not in the international commodity markets. The Earth is virtuous. If we listen to her, she gives us everything. If we exploit her, she sends us the bill. Which is what we are paying today."
For Rigoni, it is also important to bring organic farming closer to people — for instance by organising activities where consumers are met in person to help them understand the benefits of organic products, from the advantages for our health and that of the environment to their superior organoleptic qualities. "The dream is for organic agriculture to become the standard of the future," concludes Cristina Rigoni. "My hope is for a completely organic form of production that can feed the world."