In Verolavecchia a €25 million dairy farm does not just wait for the Ministry's price: it also takes its milk to where people drink it
3 October 2026, 18:44
In Verolavecchia, in the lowlands south of Brescia, Giuseppe Ruggeri and Valeria Comensoli Ruggeri keep almost 3,000 cattle and milk more than 100,000 litres a day. Cascina Malgherosse has a turnover of €25 million and works with 40 people who have come from all over the world; in 2022 there were 30. The grandfather kept about eighty cows. Giuseppe took over the business on a lease in 2003 and bought it in 2021.
The backdrop does not help. In the North of Italy the farm-gate price of milk for this half-year was set at a table at the Ministry of Agriculture: 48 cents a litre in July and August, 49 now, 50 in November and December, after six months of falling prices. And in Lombardy the number of dairy farms falls year after year.
The problem belongs to the whole trade. A farmer decides the feed rations, the barns, the shifts, the health of every animal; the price of what he produces he reads in the newspaper. It is the cook who chooses the ingredients, cooks and serves, and then someone else writes the bill.
Malgherosse did not resign itself to that price. It responded with choices that have little to do with the poetry of the countryside.
Since 2009 it has kept only cows in milk and buys in heifers ready to produce, almost all of them from Germany: one trade, done on a large scale. The fields that supply its forage are farmed by neighbouring businesses, and after the harvest the manure from the barns goes back to fertilise those same fields.
The most interesting move, though, is another one. Part of the milk does not wait for the table's price: it goes, in chilled cartons, into vending machines in schools, offices and gyms. The milk goes looking for those who drink it, instead of waiting for those who buy it by the litre.
The farm-gate price is decided by the Ministry. The price at the vending machine in the gym is decided by whoever stocks it.
Then there is the work. In the age of milking robots, the business has chosen to have the animals cared for by people: the family's view is that a living being should be looked after by a living being. Ten more jobs in four years, in a sector that is losing farms.
Two summers ago, in the barn, two Korean violinists played Vivaldi and Morricone for the cows and for visitors. The music in the barn can be chosen. The price, on the other hand, arrives already written.
The question here is not an awkward one: it is for anyone who farms and waits for the next table. How much of their output reaches someone who pays the price directly to whoever made it?
In Verolavecchia the cows are milked three times a day. The price, in Rome, is set one half-year at a time.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Sole 24 Ore on 2 October 2026.