Our history
Our farms’ story began with the great passion of my grandfather, Mario Meschini, Milanese displaced in these territories during World War II, who fell in love with these lands and always looked for an opportunity to come back…
THE FIRST “SANTA MARIA”
The opportunity arrived at the end of the 70’s, when he took over the “Santa Maria” farm, which back then it was not exclusively focused on cultivating rice and cereals, but also on the zootechnical type, with a large animal husbandry which reached its peak with around 300 head of cattle. Already back then, the grandfather felt a strong need to be not only a farmer of this beautiful land, but to also contribute to increase the value and development of the territory.
THE MUNICIPAL SWIMMING POOL
For this reason, during the first years of the 80’s, he renovated the covered swimming pool located on our properties and donated it to the municipalities of Mede and Lomello, where they could organize swimming classes, particularly during the school year for the children of the elementary and middle schools. I still remember the happiness and pride of my grandfather when he was telling about his farmhouse: he used to say:” the Santa Maria of Mede”, and then he was very keen to emphasize that “it is right in the middle of the Lomellina land: half of the fields are located in the municipality of Lomello!”
THE GRANDFATHER’S ILLNESS AND THE “DARK” YEARS
The last years of the last century could be defined as “dark” years for our farmhouse: agronomically wrong choices, economic difficulties and, especially, my grandfather’s illness brought the company one step away from permanently closing…
Giovanni Nipoti
In 2001 the grandfather together with my father, Ennio Cisco, and my mother, Angela Meschini, met Giovanni Nipoti… and something sparked straight away! But that day, with that meeting, we have been lucky enough to give rebirth to that project of development of the lands we cultivate with care and quality and which brought us where we are today. Giovanni Nipoti, our manager, initially had our lands reborn; new cultivation techniques, a great attention to details, both agronomic and managerial; shared values in line with the company’s objectives.
RICE FOR SOWING AND SUSHI
The new path of development of the company has been set by my father, and since he passed in 2011, with my mother and my brother we shared with Giovanni the actual growth which we strive to continue every day. I would say that we could sum it up in 3 simple concepts: quality, valorisation of the lands we cultivate, high value niche products. We focus on the production quality, looking for varieties, supply chain contracts, and relevant market niches; in addition to the traditional rice, we produce with satisfaction varieties of black rice, aromatic rice, indica…; we are multipliers of seed rice and we have a what is now a 5-year collaboration for sushi rice production.
New varieties
Every year we dedicate 1 hectare to some seed companies and the outcome is what you can see in the beautiful pictures of the website… So, as a direct consequence, we welcomed with passion the suggestions found in the circular from the Ente Nazionale Risi (National Rice Authority) from June 2014 in which there were over 1.300 varieties, both Italian and from abroad, at disposal for those who wanted to make relive a second youth to those rice which could be of interest not only at an agronomic level, but as cultural emancipation of our rice supply chain. Firstly, we all fell in love with the name “Lomello”, my grandfather first would have been proud; it was evocative of how the Lomellina and Lomello are associated to this variety; moreover, the clear and evocative geographic location make it for us the perfect evidence of the “cultural rebirth” of the Italian rice supply chain. In our small way we are honoured to continue this strong group of purposes, because it is also part of our company history.
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See also
OUR PRODUCTS
Quality and niche products, a combination of high value
HOW WE WORK
Our methods: the combination between the past and new cultivation’s techniques
THE TERRITORY
Our territory, perfect for our cultivations