Italian organic retail chain NaturaSì has launched an initiative aimed at fostering a “courage of transparency” around food pricing – in particular, highlighting the need for more equitable returns for often undervalued and underpaid farmers and growers. 

As part of its ‘We Support Agriculture’ initiative the retailer will pilot ‘fair price’ labelling information in-store and online, which will show a break-down of where the retail cost of a food product goes. 

The initiative has been launched amid a deepening crisis in agriculture across Europe, which has seen the closure of millions of small farms. While farmers’ protests seen across the continent in 2023 and 2024 were often framed as ‘anti-green policy’, attention is now turning to the real cause of the farming crisis – an increasingly unequitable food system and collapse in farm gate prices. 

At an official launch of the scheme in Rome last week, NaturaSì founder and president, Fabio Brescacin, said the scheme was designed to help “start a virtuous path” to get us to the “right price for food”. 

Brescacin added: “For a healthy Earth, for a healthy food, but also for a healthy economic system, a new fraternal alliance is necessary between those who produce, those who market and those who consume. The courage of transparency is the first step to take in this direction: dialogue can be born from transparency and mutual trust from dialogue.”

The last few decades has seen a race to the bottom in food prices with devastating consequences for agriculture. One of the speakers on the day was IFOAM Organics Europe’s policy manager, Silvia Schmidt, who highlighted the collapse in farm gate prices that has hit growers. As examples, she said that in the 1970s, farmers received 19% of the price of a loaf of bread, whereas today, they only receive 4%. Similarly, farmers used to receive 85% of the price of eggs, but now it’s just 41%.

Schmidt praised NaturaSì’s “bold and courageous initiative”, and said that transparent pricing of the type being trialled by the retailer would help build trust between, consumers, farmers and the whole supply chain. 

For the first phase of the NaturaSi scheme the retailer will display “fair price labelling” across a selected range of food staples. Examples include:

Organic bread
Retail price: EUR 3.99 (700 g)
Farmer and bakery receives: EUR 2.52
Retailer costs: EUR 1.31
VAT: EUR 0.16

Organic fennel
Retail price: EUR 3.98 per kg
Agronomists, quality control, transport: EUR 0.80 per kg
Retailer costs: EUR: 1.23 per kg
VAT: EUROPE 0.15 per kg

Organic tomato puree
Retail price EUR 1.65
Farmer: EUR 0.33
Agronomists, quality control, transport: EUR 0.14
Processor: EUR 0.64
Retail costs: EUR 0.39
VAT: EUR 0.15

Organic kiwi fruit
Retail price: EUR 4.90 per kg
Farmer: EUR 2.50 per kg
Agronomists, quality control, transport: EUR 0.80
Retailer costs EUR 1.41 per kg
VAT: EUR 0.19 per kg 

NaturaSì operates over 300 stores across Italy, and has two outlets in Spain.