"At first I was skeptical, I did not believe in the need to make a sustainable change in agriculture. Climate change in the 90s seemed a distant, vague phenomenon, yet to be fully demonstrated. I was young, just out of the agriculture faculty. The environmental issue was still marginal. Then the drought arrived in Sardinia, and for some years we have witnessed the drying up of our land, the stalemate of production. It was an opportunity to reflect and to see things in perspective".

This is how Elisabetta Falchi describes the turning point of a company that sees her as the heir to a journey that began in 1792, when even remote Sardinia was involved in the upheavals triggered by the French Revolution. The strength to imagine the future derives from conscious belonging to history, as the fate of the branches depends on the health of the roots that live in depth. For twenty years now, the Agricola Falchi Company has embraced a philosophy that aims to combine prosperity and environmental sustainability.

Together with her sisters Maura, Cristina and Paola and her mother Rosanna, Elisabetta Falchi carries on the innovative impulse given to production by her father Antonio, an agronomist who in the 1950s actively collaborated with the OECE (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) to accompany Sardinia towards modernity. A family that has always been at the forefront, in many fields.

The Falchi Company responds to the drought of the 90s by embracing the indications of the European Community, basing perspectives and strategies on scientific research: "I did not want to surrender to the prejudice that rice cultivation was unsuitable for our territories, that it could not find a balance with the surrounding nature. So it was. We grew up respecting the environment, we created harmony between nature and work".

Since 2016, the Falchi Farm has been regulating crops according to the criteria of the National Quality System of Integrated Production, which makes agriculture compatible with environmental protection, at Italian and EU level. But the 21st century company has decided to go beyond European borders: together with the other 14 companies of the SA.PI.SE cooperative, operating between Sardinia and Piedmont, it has become the first seed company in the world to be able to boast the Farm Sustainability Assessment certificate (FSA) of the SAI platform, a rigorous and prestigious international recognition.

Rice, wheat, tomatoes and other crops such as hemp sativa and lavender are grown with total respect for the ecosystem, the water, the animals and plants that populate them. "Of course - explains Elisabetta Falchi - they were rational choices, determined by a need that we feel as imperative. But also from the feeling that flares up when we think of Sardinia and its infinite beauties. We must preserve them in synergy, together with tourism, nautical and cultural sectors. A collective care that becomes a legacy for our future generations, the thread of tradition that continues over time".