The mainstream press has launched yet another attack on intensive farming. This confirms how disconnected the national media is from the dynamics of agricultural and livestock production
An article published in Corriere della Sera on March 31, 2026, by Alessandro Sala, denounces the high livestock density in Lombardy. For every two inhabitants, there is one cow or one pig crammed into intensive farms. This situation, however, is nothing new, given that Italy’s most valuable livestock population is concentrated in the three provinces of Brescia, Cremona, and Mantua. With all the resulting environmental implications.
Ammonia, for example, is produced 90 percent by livestock manure, and a significant portion of fine particulate matter, approximately 17 percent, also comes from livestock. Obviously, we would gladly do without these emissions, but for now, we must accept that if we want to use livestock-derived feed, there are no alternatives.
The Bel Paese’s topography doesn’t offer the endless Australian prairies, where 150 million sheep graze, equal to seven and a half animals per capita, nor does it enjoy the expanses of the Argentine Pampas, where 55 million cattle are raised, nine million more than the human population. Furthermore, unlike a century ago, when every farm in Italy, from Bressanone to Ragusa, raised a few cows and pigs, today livestock farming is concentrated in the areas with the greatest livestock production, the plains straddling the Po River.
The same thing happens, however, with apples, almost all of which are grown in Trentino-Alto Adige because that’s where the best conditions are found. Even the wine-growing provinces have become such for the same reasons: favorable climate and terrain. The same goes for Puglia, home to about a third of the country’s olive groves, and Sicily, which grows the majority of citrus fruits. These are crops with a “territorial agricultural vocation,” and all, without exception, are accused of health and environmental atrocities, forgetting that if they were eliminated, the same produce would have to be imported from abroad.
The chemophobic protests against apple growers in the Adige Valley and those against Treviso’s Prosecco producers are therefore ridiculous, and the anti-pesticide media opposition in Puglia, which was expressed in an attempt to stem the spread of Xylella fastidiosa, has a terrorist flavor. Perhaps only citrus fruits are not yet suffering from such media pillorying, but there is a fear that sooner or later they too will end up in the crosshairs.
No one, least of all the journalists at Corriere della Sera, thinks that certain forms of cultivation and livestock farming are more “specialized” than “intensive,” such as the production of durum wheat alternating with sunflowers in the Marche hills, or the rice grown in Vercelli, Novara, and Pavia. Reversing scenarios triggered by natural orographic and environmental conditions is impossible, a statement that also applies to corn, planted almost exclusively in the Po Valley, since it requires large amounts of water to grow and is the basis of cattle and pig feed.
And here we return to the Northern farms and those who hurl attacks on livestock farming without understanding that the illusory “green” practices championed by the most vulgar and ignorant environmentalists would be unable to maintain current production levels. Moreover, they are already insufficient to meet society’s food demands.
The mountain pastures are beautiful, where a few dozen cows happily yowl across flowery plains, and their milk and the resulting dairy products are excellent. But without intensive lowland farming, the availability of meat, milk, butter, and cheese would plummet, not to mention the crisis that PDO products would face due to the lack of available milk. The same fate awaits branded cured meats.
These are all problems unknown to the environmentalists of the moment, who consume rather than produce food by living in urban and industrial environments that generate most air and water pollution. The idea of establishing an “intensive citizenship” doesn’t occur to them, too busy protesting against farmers and ranchers while staying in homes and offices that are well-heated in winter and well-cooled in summer. And it doesn’t matter if such comforts are responsible for more than half of Lombardy’s fine particulate matter. To those who don’t want or can’t understand the above scenarios, a word of advice: don’t talk with your mouth full. Especially about things you know little about.
Author: Furio Oldani
Title: Intensive farming in Lombardy: no one speaks with their mouths full
Translation with Google
