Natural horticultural systems in organic farming as a tool for resilience: improvement of economic performance and prevention of soil erosion

ABSTRACT

In the Mediterranean area many organic farms oriented toward the marketing of fresh products or toward agro-food processing have been interested in the conversion of at least a part of their horticultural production to natural cultivation systems in order to supply “natural” food to satisfy a particular market demand. In this study, the role of natural agriculture has been investigated in order to evaluate its effects in environmental safeguarding and organic farm production, contrasting soil erosion and soil organic matter decline, maintaining general soil fertility on hilly farms and supporting income in the context of climate change. This study is a field trial on a hilly farm, which compared a natural plot to an organic one. It showed that in the plot conducted with natural farming, total soil organic C increased significantly compared to the organic plot, from 1.97% to 4.16%. In organic farming system a significant increase of Total Organic Carbon (TOC) at the lower part of plot was observed as a consequence of soil loss (+ 25%). An economic analysis of the two farming systems on four farms, carried out considering the average costs and the average revenues, highlighted for the first time the greater profitability of natural cultivation compared to organic farming (+43%). The balance between safe food production, natural resources management and economic performance, obtained by substituting the organic farming with natural techniques, provides new and effective resilient agricultural practices to the organic farm sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural farming
• resilient agriculture
• soil conservation
• organic farm economics

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Lazio Region for providing the data of the ARSIAL Station 101 belonging to the Agro-meteorological Network and Dr. Stanislao Esposito (CREA – Agricoltura e Ambiente) for suggestions on the processing of agro-meteorological data