North-Western Italy – Piemonte Living Lab

25 400 km²

Total area

~4,27M

Population

Vineyards, Chestnuts, Hazelnuts

Permanent Crops

Eleonora Bonifacio eleonora.bonifacio@unito.it
Living Lab Leader

The Territory

The Piemonte Living Lab is located in one of Italy’s most iconic agricultural regions, where rolling hills and sloping landscapes define both the scenery and the farming systems. Vineyards, hazelnut orchards, and chestnut groves dominate this territory, shaping its economy and international reputation.

The region is globally recognised for its wine production, with landscapes such as Langhe, Roero, and Monferrato officially acknowledged for their cultural and agricultural value. At the same time, Piemonte plays a central role in Europe’s hazelnut supply chain and maintains a strong tradition in chestnut production.

Despite its prestige, the region faces significant soil challenges. Steep slopes combined with management practices that leave soil exposed have led to high erosion rates in some areas. Addressing these risks is essential to preserving both productivity and the long-term sustainability of these high-value crops.

The Crops

Three permanent crops define Piemonte’s agricultural identity: vineyards, hazelnut orchards, and chestnut groves. Each plays a critical economic role and presents distinct soil management challenges that require tailored solutions.

Vineyards

Piemonte’s vineyards produce some of Italy’s most celebrated wines, including Barolo and Barbaresco. Management is predominantly conventional or integrated, relying on inter-row tillage for weed control and mineral fertilisers supplemented with pelleted manure. Cover crops are used in some areas but are not yet widespread. The combination of steep slopes, highly erodible soils, and frequent bare-soil periods makes vineyard soil erosion one of the most urgent challenges in the region.

Hazelnut Orchards

Piemonte’s hazelnut orchards supply some of Europe’s most important food processing industries. Management is similar to vineyards: tillage, minimal irrigation, and herbicide application for weed control. When cover crops are used, they are typically removed before harvest to allow mechanical nut collection with harvesters. Fertilisation relies mainly on mineral inputs with some pelleted manure. As with vineyards, the absence of permanent ground cover leaves soils vulnerable to erosion and organic matter depletion.

Chestnut Groves

Piemonte’s chestnut groves are concentrated on the lower slopes of the Alpine foothills. Farms are typically smaller and less mechanised than vineyards or hazelnut orchards. Many groves occupy old terraced surfaces that were historically built to prevent erosion, but these terraces are now often poorly maintained or partially destroyed. Spontaneous grass cover is the dominant soil management approach, which offers some protection, but the common practice of removing leaf litter after harvest limits organic matter return to the soil, reducing long-term soil health and fertility.

Main Challenges

The soils of Piemonte’s hilly agricultural landscapes face a combination of structural and management-related pressures that threaten both their immediate productivity and long-term health. These are the four core challenges the Piemonte Living Lab is working to address.

Soil Erosion

The hills of southern Piemonte are among the most erosion-prone agricultural landscapes in Italy. Steep slopes, highly erodible soils derived from Pliocene and Quaternary deposits, and management practices that leave soils bare for much of the year combine to produce soil loss rates of up to 40 tonnes per hectare per year in some sites. Increasing rainfall intensity driven by climate change is expected to worsen this trend. In poorly developed soils under tree crops, where available nutrients are concentrated in the top few centimetres, even moderate erosion events can have a substantial impact on soil fertility and long-term productivity.

Low contents of Organic Matter

The soils of Piemonte’s hilly areas are naturally low in organic matter, and conventional management practices — including intensive tillage, the removal of crop residues, and limited organic inputs — have further depleted organic matter levels over time. Low organic matter reduces soil structure, water-holding capacity, biological activity, and resistance to erosion, creating a compounding cycle of degradation that is difficult to reverse without targeted intervention.

Poor Soil Structure

Closely linked to low organic matter, poor soil structure is a widespread challenge across the vineyards, hazelnut orchards, and chestnut groves of the region. Soils with poor structure are more prone to compaction from machinery, surface sealing from rainfall impact, and breakdown of aggregates that are essential for water infiltration and root development. Restoring soil structure is a prerequisite for improving most other dimensions of soil health.

Limited Permeability

Poorly structured soils with low organic matter have reduced capacity to absorb and retain water, leading to increased surface runoff during rainfall events — which in turn accelerates erosion, nutrient loss, and the risk of localised flooding. In a region where water scarcity during summer can already threaten crop yields, improving soil permeability and water retention is both a soil health and an agricultural resilience priority.

A Partnership Connecting Research, Innovation and Farming

The Piemonte Living Lab brings together a focused partnership of universities, agricultural research centres, producer organisations, and advisory services: combining scientific expertise with deep practical knowledge of the region’s farming systems.

Research leadership is provided by the University of Turin (UNITO / DISAFA), with AGRION playing a central operational role across both vineyard and hazelnut experimental sites. Producer organisations and cooperatives represent the farming community, ensuring that the practices being tested are grounded in real farm contexts and that results are effectively communicated to growers across the region.

Together, this partnership is working to turn the hilly landscapes of Piemonte into a European reference for sustainable soil management in tree crop systems.