
Eusebio Francese
Cascina Canta and the Maratelli rice
That of Eusebio Francese is a choral tale that spans almost a century of history. Born in 1925 in France and moved with his family, at the age of just four, to the rice-growing heart of the Po Valley, he talks about his relationship with agriculture marked by experimentation and an uncommon ingenuity. He begins by buying his first refrigerator, aimed at increasing the production of butter, borrowing money, a heresy in a farming world that considered debt ethically unacceptable.
Forerunner of the green revolution characterized by the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and aimed at developing an intensive agricultural model, he is the first to abandon these methods. He returns to agriculture free from harmful chemicals and to less productive rice varieties that are better from an organoleptic and nutritional point of view. He designs and builds his own rice dryer and stone mill for maize based on original ideas.
The most intense story is dedicated to one variety of rice above all, Maratelli rice, a fantastic cereal from every point of view, abandoned by the market for more productive varieties. Eusebio, after having obtained permission from the Maratelli family to recover the brand, devoted himself body and soul to giving life back to this variety that had disappeared from the market. As a true lover of ancient varieties, he looks beyond the yield per hectare, focusing on the organoleptic characteristics of each variety of rice.
Video table of contents
- From France to Italy
- Debts or investments: the first butter fridge
- The strike of the weeders
- The first combine harvesters
- Rice cultivation in high water
- First herbicides
- 1966 Cascina Canta in Gionzana, Novara
- An innovative dryer
- I was the first to stop using herbicides
- Stone grinding
- Cultivating without herbicides: economic and productive consequences
- Balilla, Baldo, Vialone nano, Maratelli, Gange, Riso rosso Sant'Eursebio
- Maratelli is the best rice
- Properties of red rice
- The rice market
- History of Maratelli rice
- Produce rice seed
- Maratelli: choosing the best rice, not the most productive
- Each rice has different characteristics!
- Never quantity, only quality
- Well aged rice is better than new rice
- Rice recently produced in the West: derived products
- A fan of ancient selections
Interview information
Country: IT
Region: Piemonte
City: Novara
Suburb: Gionzana
Locality: Cascina Canta
Eusebio Francese
Year: 1925
City: Francia, Dipartimento di Gers
Profession: Farmer
Languages: Italiano
Document by: Ghiardo Luca
Video by: Ghiardo Luca, Ramazio Beatrice, Percivalle Luca
Created: 16-06-2015
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.