Among the green of the Marche countryside, in Cartoceto , in the Pesaro and Urbino provinces, it is possible to find the antique heart of Marche, among the farmers who through generations hand down the secrets of their productions and who resist despite the difficulties.
Aleksiej Giardini is thirty years old and from the time when he was fifteen, he has worked in agriculture: he chose to farming the lands where his grandfather, Egisto, and his father, Viscardo, used to work. “I tried to work in an industrial plant, he tells us, but I resisted only one year and thus I decided to cultivate the same lands that in the 50’s were cultivated by my grandfather and twenty years after also by my father.”
Afterwards Aleksiej’s father bought this agricultural company: twenty hectares of property and seventy in management, cultivated with extensive cultures and olive trees. In XII century thanks to the particular orographic conformation Cartoceto became the most important center of the’contado’ of Fano, for the olive tree cultivation and production of the best oils. November is a period of olives’ collecting and pressing, when the main square of the small center of the Marche turns into a big market where the olive growers and local oil mills present their products. It is the most important market-exhibition of olive trees and olive oil of the territory.
“We collect our olives and produce oil. Our company, Aleksiej explains, is a reality that has its strength in the family and in the love that connected us with the land, from which we always learn something and that guide us with its values and equilibrium and that we tried to transmit in our mode of producing. Of course, the costs of production are high, but our clients identify the passion that we put in our work and the quality that we offer them.” “I remember that my father used to use the technique of agrarian rotation, it means changes in cultivations and regulation of the return of coltures to the same fields: one part of land used to be cultivated under cereals, another one under sugar beets and the other under the herbs for cattle.
Today it is a mandatory choice: the market caused the eliminating of the quota for sugar production to this area and as a result we passed to the cultivation of cereals, olive trees and pig breeding. This one in order to avoid the dead periods.” Aleksiej’s work is constant and lasts for 12-15 hours a day. “In the end of October we seed cereals and in June we begin the threshing of grain and harvesting of other coltures. After their maturing, we collect them one after another. After the harvest begins the period of the lands’ plough for the following seeding. And thus the production circle begins once again.”
“Today we cultivate to sell in a market that does not give any guarantees. The price of production for a quintal of wheat is about 30 euro. The same quintal this year was sold for 24 euro. If one manages to get even without taking into consideration the hours of work in fields, it is good.”
In Cartoceto you might feel like being in a different era.
Aleksiej left his work in the fabric to be a breeder, olive and vegetable grower, creating in this center a short supply chain to fight the crisis with quality, selling directly to the consumer. It is a passion that, as we said, comes from the past. “We must be able to look behind, to our roots, history, points of departure and be able to tie the tradition and today’s innovation without forgetting the respect of the environment, harmony with nature, love for agriculture and its cultur.”
Faces and stories of our farmers
Aiol wishes to narrate agriculture, giving voice to the protagonists of this sector, we belive that they do not simply carry out a job but a mission and we would like to thank them for this. Our journal gets closer to the men and women who protect the agri-food system with enthusiasm and love, and we invite them to tell us their stories, simply and sincerely.
She is fifty four years old and lives in Rome. Anna spends all her days in her agricultural farm the ‘Boccea’, that is located near Rome. She manages 2500 olive trees, 100 cows with their calves, 3 bulls and a 3 hectares garden, which is a biodynamic one.
In 2002 when Anna had the economic possibilities to buy and renovate one of the family agricultural farms, she decided to dedicate herself to this activity. Her love for land is inherited from her grandfather: in the 50s he had sheep, milk cows, wine and olive trees and annually used to follow the antique, and now almost forgotten, ritual of the “transumanza”: where the cattle changed the pasture from the winter to the summer one.
“At that time the farms were very different” and her grandfather gave work to 300 people. The mechanization has reduced the staff and slowly made old traditions fade away.
Today the farm is shifting into a total biodynamic production: following the example of what is done in Australia and California, they decided to breed their cows only with herbs and hay and to highly reduce fodder, that is, anyway, organic. It is a breeding technique that has in its roots something “revolutionary” in it: leaving, as in the case of her farm, cows of only two races the Limousine and the Marchigana, free to pasture. The meet obtained is different from the one to which we are accustomed to: it is darker, requests more maturation but has less fat and it is healthier.
To learn directly and follow the best examples, Anna had the fortune that one of her collaborators, Christian Panarella, met the promoter of the Australian biodynamic agriculture Alex Podolinsky and was able to follow him for some time in Australia to see in the “field” the methods used in that Country that is so distant but that has a climate very similar to the one we have here. Furthermore during a trip in California Anna herself had opportunity to taste this type of meat and observe the breeding techniques.
The “revolutionary” bet is still going on: the meat produced is sold to local shops and they have also began a program of direct sail to consumers, thus cutting one ring of the chain, and installing a direct link between producer and consumer.
Thanks to the innovative choices and the bets made, the farm products have found consumer’s approval, but this is not neither easy nor predictable road and, as Anna reminds us: “the market, just like a field, must be cultivated and cared for, only in this way it will give its fruits.”
