"The birth of the brand was the perfect opportunity to align our production with a feeling we had been nurturing for some time, the need to trigger a generational change, which would transform the agriculture of the 70s and 80s, devoted to indiscriminate exploitation of the soil, in an activity that keeps work and environment in harmony, that creates a sustainable space for the future", says Carlo Ferrari, together with his brother Giovanni and sisters Daniela and Marinella, of a tradition inaugurated over fifty years ago by his father Angelo Mario.

The first step was joining the National Integrated Production Quality System, which regulates production at national and EU level, reducing the agriculture impacts on humans and the environment. "We have adapted the production system with techniques compatible with environmental protection- continues Ferrari - but above all invested time and resources in managing the 'cultural' transition. It is necessary to train employees and collaborators if you want them to embrace a long-term project, to convince them, and ourselves, that the goal is no longer to increase the quintals produced per hectare, but to make the company sustainable from an environmental, economic and social point of view".

Last year, all products destined for the food market also obtained the sustainability certificate. Not only: the SA.PI.SE cooperative, of which iFerrari is part together with 14 other companies operating between Sardinia and Piedmont, has become the first seed company in the world to be able to boast the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) certificate of the SAI platform. “A very important success. Soon we will also be able to boast the same certification as a company. The audits we had for the certification of the cooperative were positively evaluated. A further step towards the balance between cultivation and nature, which we want to consolidate and improve".

Thanks to the photovoltaic system that covers the roofs of the company's warehouses, iFerrari produces the energy necessary for the entire production process in total autonomy. The reduction in electricity consumption has recently been joined by that of water resources, decisive when it comes to rice cultivation. For a year now iFerrari have been part of the Oristano companies that have decided to adopt precision agriculture, a highly innovative experiment born within Maristanis, the conservation and sustainable development project that the MEDSEA foundation has been carrying out since 2017 in the wetlands that encircle the gulf. In the fields that host cranes and herons, a drone also flies capable of detecting the vitality index of rice, water stress, attacks by pathogens, humidity and soil temperature. The surgical analysis of the fields can lead to a water saving of 30%. In one year, the extension of the fields made available by iFerrari increased from 10 to 60 hectares.

Water as a good, as a future, as a universal right: iFerrari participates in the solidarity initiative "With rice we give a smile", thanks to which resources and knowledge support agriculture in the arid territories of the Tumaini Children's Home in Nanyuki, County of Laikipia, in the Rift Valley Region, Kenya. "We must learn to look beyond the limits of time and space - says Carlo Ferrari - sharing know-how so that rights, well-being and sustainability belong to every man, in Sardinia as in Africa".