Sergio Cosi

Can you tell us a bit more about the way you grow at your farm? 
At La Conquista we grow in line with biodynamic agriculture, building on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Similar to organic farming, we don’t use industrial fertilizers, pesticides and week-killers. On top of that we use various herbal and mineral additives for compost and field spray and we make use of an astrological sowing and planting calendar. The starting point is that both animal welfare, the environment and fair trade are taken into account when producing food. 

So how do you differ from your neighboring organic farms? 
One of the important aspects include using livestock manure for compost, this ensures the recycling of nutrients on land. Next to that, we put great effort in the maintenance and improvement of the soil quality and the well-being of both our crops as well as the biodiversity on our farm. To ensure the diversity of plants and animal life we do regular crop rotations and use cover crops and green manure. 

Can you tell us something about your business? 
In 2011 we built a processing plant, a packaging facility and a cooling plant. This gives us full control over the whole export logistics and enables us to transport goods from our farm to the port directly. Because we can both grow, process, package and transport the product we can cross-check the harvested and processed fruits.  As a consequence we have seen a significant improvement of the fruit because of shorter transportation between production and packaging.