Lazio is the first region in Italy in terms of number of cattle farms and the sixth in terms of size.
In fact, according to the most recent data from the National Livestock Registry Database in Teramo, the Lazio region has 9,300 farms with 107,000 beef cattle, with more than half of the herds and two-thirds of all cattle associated with the cow-calf line. That means a model that guarantees the use of pastures of high naturalistic and health value. Those same pastures that are now threatened with abandonment due to predator pressure, reduced CAP base premiums and the rarefaction of local fattening poles. The same pastures, again, that projects like LIFE Grace want to protect and conserve with actions and governance tools that enhance products, maintain local economies and offer consumers a valuable ethical and food experience.
It is in these contexts that the initiative of next March 21 will be held at the headquarters of Arsial, lead partner of LIFE Grace, in Rome and in which the regional councillor for agriculture Giancarlo Righini will also participate. It will be the first regional table dedicated to the beef cattle supply chain, aimed at enhancing the environmental role played by the cow-calf line, decisive, in Lazio, for the preservation of the rural landscape and the conservation of grassland habitats falling under the Natura 2000 Network.
The initiative, organized by ARSIAL in collaboration with AIA, is part of the actions of the EU project Life Grace, and is aimed at a discussion with the expressions of the supply chain, from production to distribution, on the options that can be activated to inform the consumer of the environmental role exercised by extensive breeding: a traditional model that finds only partial success in the finishing of animals in the regional context due to fragmented supply chain but which, however, expresses several successful realities, which have recently consolidated a better relationship between breeding, distribution and consumer instances.
Strengthening market orientation, through supply chain agreements for herds centered on the cow-calf line, is an important objective of the Lazio Region, in order to guarantee a future for thousands of small family businesses, still active on hundreds of thousands of hectares of pastures with minimal depth soils, largely collectively owned and not otherwise exploitable, given the grazing constraint dictated by the landscape and nature protection regimes to which the areas of interest are subject, and for which the recent passage of the “Nature Restoration Law” imposes a major effort to recover, by 2030, thousands of hectares of abandoned or degraded grassland habitat.
Despite having a high social value due to the large number of small farms, the regional supply chain is fragmented and with a limited capacity to carry out the finishing of livestock according to regulated quality models, or even just to enhance the various optional labeling options, which make it possible to convey to the consumer a wealth of data and information on the entire process, from the base farm to the shelf, now increasingly available in public databases, and exploitable through new technologies (QR-code, blockchain, etc.) to ensure a better exercise of the consumer’s right to choose.
With a market increasingly differentiated between HORECA (catering, public canteens, etc.), large-scale retail trade and short supply chain, AIA technicians will discuss with representatives of the regional beef supply chain the different options that can be activated to encourage, on the one hand, a better integration between breeders and distribution and, on the other, a more conscious consumption choice that better enhances the role of naturalistic garrison exercised by the thousands of small extensive farms in Lazio.
LIFE GRACE (13/03/2024)