In 1938, Angelo Ferrari’s parents, both originally from the province of Brescia in northern Italy, arrived in Sardinia after his grandfather accepted a job offer from a farming business. The plan was to stay temporarily. Instead, the family remained on the island and started a small farming operation, gradually putting down roots. Angelo was born in Oristano, where his siblings also grew up, in an environment where farming offered a tangible opportunity to build a future.

From an early age, he preferred working the land to studying. He wanted to accompany his father to the fields and spend his time outdoors. This inclination eventually led him to pursue a career in agriculture and, as soon as he could, start his own business. He began by purchasing small plots of land, until, towards the end of the 1960s, he managed to buy a larger property on the Oristano plain, in an area that would go on to become one of Sardinia’s main rice-growing hubs.

Angelo transforms that land into a rice paddy. In post-war Sardinia, land reclamation and the development of water infrastructure had opened up new opportunities for agriculture. On the Oristano plain, the flat terrain and the irrigation network managed by the land reclamation consortium made it possible to rely on a more regular water supply. The area’s first rice-growing ventures date back to the 1950s and were part of this broader agricultural transformation.

For rice growers, water is essential. Being able to manage and distribute it with a degree of consistency means having a solid foundation on which to plan production. Angelo recognises the potential of these conditions and decides to take a chance on rice cultivation at a time when it has yet to become an established crop on the island.

In the 1970s, as other farmers began investing in rice cultivation, he was also working on another front: adapting agricultural machinery to the specific requirements of a crop that demands careful soil management. The tractors and equipment available were not always suited to preparing fields for rice cultivation. Modifications, trial and error, and practical solutions were needed. Angelo modified the equipment and experimented, tackling problems that could not be solved simply by purchasing a new machine. This was one of the first defining features of the Ferrari family’s story: a willingness to find solutions rather than accept that technical limitations should determine what could be done.

“We like to be innovative farmers, but farmers all the same,” says Carlo Ferrari. This phrase perhaps best sums up the way the family sees its work. Innovation does not mean distancing yourself from the land, but learning to understand it better, observing what happens in the fields and finding the tools to work with greater awareness.

Here, the word farmer refers to a practical occupation rather than an idealised version of rural life often found in today’s storytelling. Angelo built the farm starting with relatively small plots of land and the need to adapt his work to local conditions. The next generation took up that legacy and began to organise the farm’s development around long-term goals. The aim was not simply to grow rice, but to understand how to grow it better, reduce waste, use resources more efficiently and preserve the land’s productive capacity over time.

When agricultural sustainability stops being a buzzword and becomes a guiding principle, it turns into a matter of method. It means examining every stage of production. For Carlo, this awareness took shape above all in the 1990s, when the impact of agriculture on the environment began to take on greater importance in the wider public debate. In the 2000s, with the involvement of the younger generation, this commitment evolved into a more structured, long-term business strategy. The goal is to recognise that agriculture cannot be sustainable unless the farm is economically viable, while also understanding that profitability cannot be pursued without considering the environmental and social consequences of production.

The land is a heritage entrusted to those who work it, who must ensure that it can continue to produce for generations to come.

One of the tools that has helped drive this change is precision agriculture, a set of techniques that makes it possible to better understand field conditions and target interventions, rather than treating every area as if it were uniform. Gathering information about variations across the fields helps determine where action is needed and where intervention would be unnecessary.

The Ferrari family began experimenting with the use of drones to map crops several years ago, when these technologies were less widespread. Aerial images make it possible to identify differences in vegetation and signs of plant stress, providing useful information for planning inspections and interventions. For this data to be useful, it must be interpreted and combined with agronomic knowledge. This is why the farm has also invested in equipment and software capable of working with the information collected, turning it into practical guidance.

This is also where artificial intelligence comes into play, in a practical sense: systems capable of processing large amounts of data, identifying correlations and supporting decision-making. In other words, a tool that helps make a process more efficient, while still requiring observation, expertise and the ability to interpret results. Precision agriculture helps reduce the use of resources and agricultural inputs, minimise waste and make better use of working time.

Mechanisation also plays an important role. Today’s agricultural machinery offers much higher levels of safety and comfort for operators than the equipment used in previous decades, improving not only the machinery itself but also working conditions and the protection of those who spend their days in the fields. This is a dimension of sustainability that often remains in the background, overshadowed by stories about technology or a focus on the finished product. For the Ferrari family, the decision to invest in innovation stems from the desire to bring all these elements together: soil health, production efficiency, operator safety and economic sustainability.

If cultivation represents the most visible link between the farm and the land, varietal research tells another part of the story, one that is less immediately apparent to someone buying a packet of rice, yet fundamental to understanding the business.

The Ferrari family has long been involved in seed selection and production. In 1978, Angelo was among the co-founders of Sardo Piemontese Sementi, a company established through a partnership between eight families, four from Sardinia and four from Piedmont. The project brought together two regions with a long agricultural tradition and will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2028.

Seed production is important because it takes the work back to the very beginning of the food production chain. The farm has a research centre where different varieties are crossbred and selected. This work has led to the development of varieties that have helped diversify Italy’s rice landscape. Among the best-known is Venere, an aromatic black rice developed through varietal research and patented in 1997. Today, its commercialisation is governed by an exclusive agreement with Riso Scotti, which handles processing and sales under the terms of the agreement, while the agricultural supply chain follows specific cultivation and harvesting rules.

Alongside black rice, the selection programme has led to the development of Ermes, a red rice obtained through crossbreeding, and Apollo, a long-grain aromatic rice that also offers an Italian alternative to basmati. Apollo has become familiar to many consumers because it is often associated with light eating and specific dietary regimes. It offers similar characteristics.

These varieties are complemented by better-known staples of Italian cuisine, such as Carnaroli and Arborio, which are ideal for risotto, and Artemide, a long-grain pigmented rice suited to rice salads, one-dish meals and recipes in which the grain’s texture and shape play an important role. Artemide was developed as part of the same research programme that produced Venere. For years, it remained in the shadow of black rice’s popularity, but it is now finding new commercial opportunities, including through small and medium-sized rice mills and farms looking for distinctive varieties to bring to market.

Despite a history dating back to the 1950s and a production sector that has become economically significant for the Oristano area, rice has yet to gain the same symbolic recognition in Sardinia as other agricultural products.

When people think of Italian rice, their minds often turn to Piedmont, Lombardy or Veneto, while in Sardinia rice still struggles to be recognised as a product that embodies the island’s identity. “Rice’s biggest competitor in Sardinia is fregula,” Carlo observes.

This difference is reflected in restaurant menus. Often, the only description is simply “risotto”, perhaps accompanied by the name of the variety used. Much less frequently are the farm, the place of production or the area of origin mentioned. And yet, stating that a rice comes from the Oristano plain adds information that goes beyond the raw ingredient, bringing into view an agricultural landscape, a production system and a community of people working to keep it alive.

Over the years, the farm has built relationships with chefs and restaurateurs interested in using Sardinian rice and highlighting its origins. Among the establishments mentioned by Carlo Ferrari are Salvatore Camedda’s Ulia and Italo Bassi’s Confusion, both of which pay attention to identifying the origins of their ingredients.

For the Ferrari family, however, collaboration can become something more than a commercial relationship between producer and buyer. Restaurateurs can become partners with whom to share a project, helping to communicate the value of a raw ingredient.

This idea gave rise to Storie di territorio, a feature conceived by Francesca Mattana, the farm’s communications manager, to involve restaurateurs in the Sinis area who share an interest in promoting the place where they work. The project brings together rice, cuisine and the people who can help tell the story of the local area.

It is a process that takes time and consistency, but one that can help build a less abstract gastronomic identity, rooted in the real relationships between those who grow the ingredients and those who transform them.

One aspect emerges clearly when Carlo talks about the future of the farm: the desire to help preserve employment opportunities in Sardinia, a region that continues to grapple with depopulation and the departure of many young people.

“Working in the family business,” he explains, “cannot depend solely on being part of the family. Everyone needs to have something to bring to the table, a skill to develop, a contribution to share with others.” It is a delicate balance, in which personal relationships cannot constantly override business decisions. But it is also a necessary condition for ensuring that generational succession does not become a mere transfer of ownership, without a project capable of sustaining the business over time.

Agriculture can provide a space in which to build professional expertise, introduce technical skills and offer prospects to those who want to work without necessarily having to leave the island. For this to happen, businesses must be able to generate value and adapt to changing markets. Economic sustainability thus becomes a prerequisite for social sustainability as well.

This is one of the reasons why the Ferrari family sees diversification as a strategic direction. Rice remains at the heart of their story, but it can also serve as a starting point for developing different products and activities, including completing more of the supply chain within the farm by bringing processing and packaging stages further into the business. Shortening and gaining greater control over production stages can help add value to the product and strengthen the relationship between cultivation, processing and the market.

Alongside this path, there are projects still under consideration, some of which extend beyond the food sector and explore ways to valorise processing by-products. The idea is to build a system, wherever technically and economically feasible, in which the output left over from one process can become a raw material for another.

Growing a good product is not enough, just as having an ingredient featured in a few restaurants is not enough. Building recognition takes time, visibility and relationships. Producers, processors, retailers and storytellers all need to learn to recognise the value of what is grown and made around them.

For Sardinian rice, this also means moving beyond the idea that its presence on the island is simply a curiosity waiting to be discovered. Rice cultivation is an agricultural activity with its own history, expertise, investment and tangible economic role. Gaining recognition means making it part of the contemporary story of Sardinia, without forcing it into a tradition that is not its own or treating it as less representative of the island simply because it is more recent.

A region’s identity is often shaped by the work of those who choose to invest in a place, transform it and take responsibility for keeping it productive.