ForumforAg Food Systems Podcast Summary

In this latest podcast, Mark Titterington is joined by Lodovica Freyberg, from the San Giorgio Soil Regeneration Project who were awarded a diploma of recognition in the 2025 Land and Soil Management Award, recognising their pioneering water management and reforestation techniques in the challenging environment of drought-affected Sicily. She explains how they are blending traditional knowledge with modern ecological practices to build resilient agricultural systems capable of reducing flood risks while actively fighting desertification.

Here is a summary of the conversation.

Your family has been farming in Sicily for generations. What motivated you to start taking action to protect the soil and adapt to a changing climate?

The biggest influence was that my father always said that we’re not here to just exploit the land, we’re here to protect it and take care of it. That always motivated not just me, but also my siblings, to truly look after our land. We saw that the worsening climate situation; the soil has been so affected that we realized if we didn’t do something for the soil, then the rest of the farming would go downhill.

How long ago did you take this decision, and what practices have you adopted?

We started three years ago, but it was really a slow process. It wasn’t a planned project. We had a catastrophic flood one year where we lost almost all of our 3,000 newly planted small citrus plants. That’s when we realized we really needed to do something about the water. We have a huge problem here: for six or seven months, there’s desertification with no water, and then in one or two days, we get as much water as we’d normally see in a year. So, when the water does arrive, we realized we needed to try and catch it and be able to use it during a drought. As we worked on that, we started implementing more and more little things, and the whole project just happened. We focused on adding small things to the farm, like getting the water to go back into the soil to help the groundwater level replenish.

Was it really that climatic event, the flood, that concentrated your minds, or were you edging towards that anyway?

It’s been a long journey. We went organic 20 years ago, which was very new in Sicily then. My father always tried to be as sustainable as possible, and his main message was always to work with nature, not against it. When we had the flooding, we didn’t try to build huge blocks to keep the water out; we tried to use our ecosystem and environment to make the farm better.

Desertification is a growing concern across Europe. How has what you’ve done on the land since you went organic 20 years ago helped make your land and business more resilient and productive, especially with desertification increasing?

With the organic farming, we saw a difference immediately. I remember being little, and you didn’t see a lot of wildlife, few insects or butterflies. But now, since we went organic, there’s so much wildlife – you can really feel that the ecosystem is healthy. For us, that was the biggest change and the biggest motivation to keep going: to see that it makes sense to be sustainable and to work with your land and for your land.

Give us a picture of your farm in Sicily. Describe what it’s probably looking like right now.

We were really lucky because last week it rained a lot, which is amazing especially before the summer. We are exactly at the end of the plain and at the beginning of the hills. The plain is very dry, but as you approach the farm, it becomes greener and greener, and for me it’s the most amazing thing to come home and see the nature.

Thinking about financing the transition in agriculture, are your customers more engaged, do they appreciate what you’re doing and as a result paying you more?

Navigating how to sell our product while also conveying what we stand for has been a journey. My brother was a pioneer there, trying to export the fruit and speaking to customers, showing them what our business is about – that we’re a family who cares about our land and our product. We value their opinion. Whenever someone is curious about the farm, we were always very happy to show them around and explain.

For other farmers or landowners thinking about starting a similar journey, what’s the message you’d share with them?

Start as soon as possible, but don’t think that you need to have a completely planned, perfect project. We didn’t; we just started because we had a need for it, and then the project developed. By speaking to people, you get more and more ideas. Just last week, someone gave me another idea, and we might start implementing that. So, it’s really a journey, and I don’t know if I’ll ever say it’s ended. There are always going to be improvements we can make.

As a young person in farming, what gives you passion, inspiration, and the belief that working in agriculture is for you?

The changes that you see when you care for your land. What you give to the land, it will give back to you. And that’s the best motivation, because if you see that what you do actually bears fruit, then why wouldn’t you continue doing it?