Soya, only 20% is made in Italy: a plan to reduce the deficit

Dfrom livestock feed to new hypersalutary foods to energy uses. Soya is a strategic raw material whose deficit, in times of food sovereignty, is the most conspicuous. The failure to define a European protein plan that was always announced and never launched remains one of the greatest unfinished tasks of the Common Agricultural Policy that is about to be reformed by the Commission to come.

Soy is a key commodity mainly due to its uses in animal feed and the food industry, whose national deficit exceeds 80% while at European level, according to a report published a few days ago by the Commission, only 27% of the meal needed to feed the livestock sector is produced.

World production is concentrated in three countries: the United States, Brazil and Argentina, which alone produce almost 90% of the world's soya, almost all of it genetically modified. In the new 2024-25 campaign, harvests are expected to reach a new record of 414 million tonnes, 10 million more than estimated consumption, an imbalance that foreshadows new downward price corrections. Italy is the first (and almost the only) European producer with just 1.2 million tonnes - strictly non-GMO - produced on an area of over 300 thousand hectares.

Against this backdrop Cereal Docks, the Vicenza-based 1.6 billion turnover giant led by Mauro Fanin, has launched a new campaign to build the loyalty of suppliers of the group that buys and processes over 60% of the soya grown in Italy. The initiative (called "3A+", for agriculture, food and environment) proposes to the group's 18 thousand direct or indirect supplying producers to participate, on the eve of sowing, in the national second-harvest soya chain, with the recognition of a bonus for farmers who join the project and contribute to the diffusion of green agronomic practices such as sowing on hard or with minimum tillage, with a positive impact also on water saving and carbon fixation.
In addition, soya cultivated as a second crop guarantees producers the possibility of accessing the EU derogation on set-aside and the bonuses provided by the new CAP.

The virtual heir of Raul Gardini's Ferruzzi-Montedison group project, the industrial group based in Camisano Vicentino processes more than 3 million tonnes of agricultural raw materials for the production of flours, oils, lecithins, gluten-free flours, precooked flours and grits derived from oilseeds and cereals and destined for applications in the agro-food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, technical and energy sectors. It alone guarantees more than a third of the national supply of soya flour. Of the 7 plants owned (plus 4 storage centres), one, the one in Marghera, is only for processing imported GM soya, which the processing makes 'technically inert'.