The 2023 corn campaign confirms a state of suffering in the sector that will continue in 2024. Despite the good performance of yields, for the first time in the last 160 years, the cultivated area is under 500 thousand hectares.
The harvested production, although it has risen from 4.7 to 5.3 million tonnes, remains less than 45% of the national requirement.
A trend destined to continue this year with a further 6% decrease in surfaces, with peaks above 12% in the North East. This is the picture that emerged on Corn Day 2024 promoted by Crea of Bergamo, with the participation of researchers and main players in the supply chain.
An edition focused on the possible strategic relaunch of the crop from a green perspective, in the context of the so-called regenerative agriculture.
It is a more sustainable system from an environmental (control of greenhouse gas emissions) and economic (supply of agricultural raw materials) point of view, integrated with the holistic approach of organic agriculture, without limits to the adoption of innovations technologies in nutrition, defense and genetic improvement, which incorporates the objectives of carbon farming and a vision closer to the market and consumers.
"Regenerative agriculture - explains Nicola Pecchioni, director of Crea Cerealicoltura e Colture Industriali - places renewed attention on the soil, on its organic substance, on the fertility of the land and arable systems. More research is needed in this sense, because the support for cultivation and supply chains".
Corn, therefore, could represent the key crop to support the carbon balance of agricultural companies, as it has a production capacity higher than that of all other national arable crops.
In all of this, new biotechnologies make it possible to obtain varieties suitable for regenerative agriculture.
The results of the monitoring of the mycotoxin content in grain conducted by the Maize Quality Network coordinated by the Cree Center of Bergamo, highlighted that 7% of the samples have an aflatoxin content higher than 20 µg/kg, extremely lower than what was found for the campaign maidicola 2022, in which 26% of the samples were above this value.
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