Past, present and future

Past: the Origins of the Co-operative

Campo società cooperativa agricola was born in 1978 thanks to some farmers of a small village in the Marche Region named Isola del Piano.

Already at the beginning of the seventies, the farmer of this village realized that people were polluting their fields, water and air with the modern chemical agricultural products. These farmers in facts, always saw with skepticism the use of chemistry in agriculture.

This little group of farmer continued cultivating in a organic way and jointed together in a co-operative form in order to support one another. At that time, there was no organized market of organic products yet, so they were obliged to sell their products as conventional.

After the organic farming was recognized and regulated by European Regulation, Campo started to transform and sell organic products, first whole-wheat stone grounded pasta, then canned organic tomatoes. In 1985 the first canned organic tomatoes were produced in our region with our label.

Present: Campo Today

The Co-operative

In the Marche Region many things changed in the last decades, some mills closed, many farmers abandoned their fields and tomatoes were no longer produced on our hills. Campo was therefore obliged to search in other parts of Italy other partners with whom we could invest and work together. We took up this difficult challenge. In this way we developed a wide competence and know-how in searching, knowing and testing new farmers, organic producers and products. We established new strong relationships that today are based on a stable mutual trust. So we evolved from a group of organic farmers into a service co-operative offering specific services to the organic sector. Nowadays we are a point of reference for many companies that are looking for a selection of organic Italian products.

The Members

Campo has about 40 members divided in three different types: 15 Farmers: Some of them are the founders and have a long experience in organic farming, they are the knowledge and the soul of the co-operative. 10 Workers: In the store, office and direction, all workers of the co-operative are members with a permanent contract. Campo is prevalently a female co-operative, 7 of the 10 workers are women. 15 Investors: The investor members are all friends who believed in the Campo project investing their money in it. They give both their financial and professional support.

Products and Services

We work to produce and offer organic basic products of the Mediterranean cooking, like pasta, tomatoes, beans, oil, vinegar and others.

We are proud to give our contribution to the development of a healthy, responsible food. One of our goals is to offer a quality product at a right price that anyone can afford. We need more in order to grow organic products, we need a legacy of knowledge as well as collaborations in order to reduce the costs with the correct economies of scale. Our products are then grown and transformed by our partners in different parts of Italy, stored in our storage and after internal quality controls are ready to be labeled and delivered. We care about the quality, certifications, storage logistic, labeling, payments till the development of new products.

Future: The goals

With over thirty years activity we can demonstrate that: agriculture doesn't need any chemical substance to survive and organic farming is much more sustainable than the conventional one; it's not necessary to contaminate fields, water and air in order to produce food, which is in turn contaminated; we don't need to invest million of euros in misleading publicity that inevitably will be paid by deceived consumers. One of the main goals of the last years has been to demonstrate that we could produce organic food with a competitive price. First with pasta and then with tomato we could reach this goal and now our range of products are competitive also with those of the conventional market. Our future goal is to avoid that the organic market remains a niche, we believe organic food has to be for everybody and for a daily use, it should be a normal healthy habit and not a luxury style of life. We are aware that considering all environmental, social and health costs, it will be cheaper for our planet to produce and consume organic food.