Marinella Ferrari Angelo Mario Ferrari
From the courage of pioneers to a lifelong passion: the story of those who brought rice to Sardinia
Angelo Mario Ferrari recounts a life deeply intertwined with the history of Sardinian agriculture. The son of a Lombard family who moved to Sardinia in 1938, he grew up in the countryside and, after his first experiences with sugar beets and wheat, chose to take a chance on rice — a crop then almost unknown on the island. With determination, he overcame the challenges of a sector that required new tools and knowledge, turning an intuition into a thriving reality.
From hand transplanting in the paddies to introducing the use of tractors in flooded fields — a practice he pioneered in Sardinia — Ferrari helped expand a sector that today covers several thousand hectares in the Campidano and sustains an organization capable of bringing Sardinian rice beyond regional borders.
In his words resonate the memory of a land, the ingenuity of farmers, and the passion of someone who, with perseverance, gave a future to a harvest and a tradition.
Video table of contents
- Lombard origins and the move to Sardinia
- The mother employed by Mr. Bertazzoli
- A farmer can grow any plant well if he has passion
- Bertazzoli, a man from Brescia, brought rice to Sardinia
- From sugar beets in the Sinis to rice
- The first years of rice cultivation
- A Frenchman's Visit to My Rice Fields: The World's Best Rice Fields
- The beginnings in the 1970s: our lands are suitable for rice
- The Mistral keeps the Pyricularia grisea away from the laughter
- The first rice mill in Sardinia
- SAPISE, Sardinian Piedmontese Seeds: the rice seed with the highest germination rate
- From Balilla rice to other varieties
- From hand-sowing in water to the first sowing with the tractor broadcaster
- The future of the company: children and grandchildren
- Dependence on winter water and its accumulation in dams
- The canals were made by the Consorzio di Bonifica
- I'm the closest to the sea but the salt has never bothered us
- We have the same weeds that we have in Northern Italy
Interview information
Country: IT
Region: Sardegna
City: Oristano
Locality: Località "Pesaria" Pinna Manna, 09170 Oristano OR
Urls: Riso I Ferrari
Angelo Mario Ferrari
Date of birth: 08-25-1938
City: Oristano
Profession: Farmer
Languages: Italiano
Document by: Luca Ghiardo
Video by: Luca Ghiardo
Created: 28-08-2025
Questo video fa parte del seguente archivio
Rice stories
Rice stories
Food is a fundamental resource for man and his health, both through the supply of nutrients and the ability to embody traits of human culture that play a leading role in our well-being.
Over time, each territory has built original ways in which to relate to the fruits of its land, enriching them with rituals, symbolic meanings and culinary customs. Much of these relationships have been lost following the years of the economic boom, with the exodus from the countryside to urban centers, with the advent of agriculture for mass production and ultimately with the globalization of markets and the consequent impoverishment of the heritage of biodiversity and ethnodiversity.
The purpose of this archive is to collect evidence relating to the main rice production area in Europe, that is the Po Valley, and to investigate, through the analysis of textual sources and testimonies collected in the field, both what survives of this heritage, and the ways in which which has evolved and reached us, paying particular attention to the explicit and implicit links that bind food and health.
