Success Story

The Giuseppe Lanini’s Farm is located in Mucigliano, a small municipality of Asciano in the province of Siena (Tuscany region, Italy). The farm has a surface area of 200 ha with 1 person as permanent staff and 2 people as temporary staff. In addition, the farmer works as a contractor and can cultivate 600 ha. They are cultivating the following crops: durum wheat (Triticum durum L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), and different kind of clovers, mainly squarrosum and alexandrinum. Besides, the farm also includes livestock with almost 700 sheep. They apply soil conservation practices overall on the farm surface. Specifically, they carry out no-tillage management of the soil. They usually execute a four-year rotation, settling clover as the first-year crop followed by three-year cereals. In addition, they manage legumes with cover crop purposes. Anyway, a part of the sewage produced by sheep is used as fertilizer, while the other is sold.

The previous practices have been used from 2014 to the present (2022). They started to apply no-tillage because they had a very high cost for cultivation and low revenues from the sale of agricultural products. He received training on the practice of soil conservation from the company that sold him the sod seeding machine. However, he did not receive any financial support to start soil conservation practices. After the application of the soil conservation practices, he experienced a similar grain yield compared to the previous years, but with a lower workload and lower costs, in terms of fuel. Additionally, better soil quality was obtained in terms of fertility as assessed by the amount of organic matter and the number of earthworms in the first soil layers. Because of the lower workload, he was able to cultivate more land as compared to the previous years. On the other hand, he pointed out the diffusion of weeds, especially Lolium, overall the field; he solved the problem using Lolium as hay and applying the pre-emergence herbicide. Altogether, the farmer is very happy to apply soil conservation practices and he doesn’t want to change anything.

LABELS: Italy, crop-production, livestock, no-tillage