New Cilento Our project

EIT Food is the leading European initiative for food innovation, its mission is to build an inclusive and innovative community working to make the food system more sustainable, healthy and reliable and in which the consumer is actively involved.

In 2020 an intense collaboration with EIT FOOD was born, which chose Coop. New Cilento as a virtuous example in Italy and as a venue for training courses on regenerative organic agriculture and experimenting with an innovative method of study and work “farmer to farmer”.

The goal is the integration of the principles of regenerative agriculture learned in local and daily agricultural practice, as a concrete response to present problems. Identifying and defining the priorities and problems that afflict local agriculture, the establishment of a business experimentation in local companies, testing the main promising practices and monitoring the evolution of experimentation by the group of local farmers, these are some of the main activities carried out together. 

Analysis of the agroecosystem: the group goes to the field and evaluates the progress of treatments in terms of soil, crops, weeds and insects. The group summarizes the results and decides how to intervene (e.g. too many insects, insecticide? Pros and cons, etc.)

A specific topic: discussion on topics not strictly related to the company experiment but relevant to the whole group (e.g. degradation of residues in the field, interventions on specific crops, water management, etc.).

The Nuovo Cilento Cooperative bases its economic activity on the processing of the olives of the members and the production of organic extra virgin olive oil, in a very difficult internal territory for economic, social and environmental conditions.

The production of high quality organic extra virgin olive oil today also depends on the ability to enhance every by-product and every other biomass available in the area on site. The stability of economic and environmental systems in fact requires specific circular economy practices, able to maximize the income capacity for companies, maintaining high the capacity for self-generation of soil fertility.

The project in partnership with Rete Humusche aims to promote is aimed at using the pomace of the Cooperative’s oil mill and other agricultural and civil biomass present in the area, for a production of bio-fertilizers widespread in the associated farms. The participation of the latter is essential in order to prevent problematic accumulations of waste and the spread of sustainable practices for the protection of the territory and the environment.

The project “Management models of agricultural systems for the conservation and protection of water resources” (Acronym “Models”), funded under the RDP Campania Region 2014-2020, aims to transfer a model that allows to hoard the water resource in Mediterranean hilly areas, with high hydrogeological risk, through the enhancement of micro-collection systems and the conservative management of the soil with particular attention to organic matter and microbial balance, so as to implement the resilience of the agricultural system as a whole and maximize water retention capacity.

The reference territory for the activities of the project is that of the National Park of Cilento, Vallo di Diano, Alburni and in particular the Municipality of San Mauro Cilento has been identified. 

Our cooperative is part of the operational group and is the ‘leader’ of the project, proving once again to be an important cooperative agricultural reality, collaborating in the testing of conservative agronomic interventions, the production of organic and bio-regeneration formulations, interventions for the recovery of rainwater through micro collection plants, the dissemination and dissemination phase of the results.

The cooperative Nuovo Cilento has obtained funding from the Chamber of Commerce of Salerno for technological innovation in agriculture and together with the University of Agriculture of Portici, ruralhub and primoprincipio, is proceeding with the installation of weather sheds with DSS (Decision support system) software in order to monitor the climatic trend and draw up forecast models against the olive fly over time,  The peacock’s eye and the main adversities of the olive tree. Members have the opportunity, by accessing the reserved area, to view climate data and know the alerts of forecast models.