Good result for the rice growing season that has just ended, which marks a growing production in Sardinia which should amount, according to estimates by the National Rice Authority, to around 280 thousand quintals harvested on an area of approximately 3800 hectares .

90% of the production comes from the Oristano district, the remainder from the San Gavino Monreale area.

The favorable climate , which accompanied the production cycle until the last stages which are closing in recent days, favored the excellent harvest. The trend of regional growth in cultivated areas, which has been going on for a few years, with an increase of over 100 hectares, is also confirmed for 2023.

A state of health of the Sardinian sector in clear contrast to various agricultural sectors, which are increasingly paying the price for the ongoing climate crisis and its innumerable variables.

Positive signals are also coming from the national market where Italy confirms itself at the top of the producing countries of the European Union with just under 210 thousand hectares of cultivated areas especially between Piedmont (about 50% of all Italy), Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna. Romagna, Sardinia, Campania and Calabria.

And although the island does not reach 2% of the national figure in quantitative terms, local production still manages to carve out a specificity due to the extraordinary quality of the final product and also of the seed rice. A characteristic due to the weather-climatic conditions which allow plants to grow with little humidity and therefore not conditioned by fungal diseases, due to constant ventilation ensured above all by the mistral, which is also followed by reduced agro-sanitary treatments in the fields.

The rice areas cultivated in Sardinia exceed those of the new emerging markets of Eastern Europe where Romania, with 3200 hectares, and Hungary, with 2000, have been looking towards these new crops for a few decades already, especially after the arrival in those countries of various Italian companies in the sector.

IMPORT ALARM – The quality of national and Sardinian production and competition on global markets is however conditioned by imports into the EU from the Asian giants of the global sector, capable of bringing 89.6% of rice to the shelves of consumers on the planet, a impressive fact which, together with very low labor costs, almost non-existent levels of safety at work, the use of agro-sanitary products prohibited by European standards and particular agreements dedicated to developing countries, knocks ever louder on the doors of the duties put in defense of the European Union's rice growers.

«The comparison with global markets is increasingly challenging in terms of competition in the final selling prices of rice. It's true, our quality is decidedly higher , but many consumers are often not in a position to value excellent products with sales prices that must necessarily be higher, are the words of Tonino Sanna , rice grower and president of Confagricoltura Oristano.

«It is necessary to increase controls on products arriving in Europe – adds Sanna –, to lobby in Asian countries so that certain chemical products are banned from agricultural processing and so that the conditions and rights of workers are respected, banning exploitation of labor, especially child labor. Here we address our appeal to the Region and the Government to become ambassadors of these demands in Brussels".

(Unioneonline/vl)

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