We got to chat with Igiea Adami, the mind behind Beni di Busonengo, where Adami farms her very own rice in Busonengo (near Biella, Piemonte region) – a location steeped in the history of growing and harvesting rice since the mid-1500s. Following her instincts, Igiea returned to the land of Busonengo after graduating college, so she could pursue her passion and love for agriculture further. Adami’s farm and the ancient village of Busonengo are both located between two of the most important rivers of the Vercelli area, the Cervo and the Elvo. And Igea’s Riso dei Beni di Busonengo is 100% Carnaroli rice – a long-grain Italian rice we most often use to make risotto.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Igiea: a very old and somewhat original name. Igiea was a nymph in ancient Greece that was dedicated to health and medicine, and it was also the name of my Sicilian great-grandmother. I was born and raised in Turin, where I studied history in college – a passion that follows me in everything I see and everything I do. I always think about the stories of the men I know, the things I see, and the places I visit; mine is a sort of professional “deformation.”
Why did you decide to grow your own rice? Is it a family tradition?
Even though I studied the humanities at school, I always thought that when I grew up, I would have been a farmer and I would have taken care of a big rice field – in some mysterious and little-known place that my family owned in the Vercelli area. It was rented for years, and then for a certain period of time, no one took care of it anymore – except for my aunt, who was in charge of the paperwork and relations with tenants. Finally in 2009, Busonengo – a small hamlet of Villarboit in the province of Vercelli – became "ours" once again and from nothing (i.e. from very little knowledge of the subject), we began to take care of the land.
It was love at first sight. Busonenengo exudes history from every brick. Here you could write the history of Italy walking through the small village, where there are traces of rural history (starting from the 12th century, when the first buildings were built), of water passages, of people, of shepherds, of transhumance, of faith and there are still three small churches.
In eighteenth-century Busonengo, there was the Falletti di Barolo feud; in the 19th century, Giulia and Tancredi di Barolo made it their social and agricultural experiment. Then there are traces of an inglorious fascist passage, traces of peasant protests (on the walls you can read inscriptions like Viva Togliatti and Abbasso De Gasperi) and traces of old homes that are a real treasure chest of history and immaterial culture. In short, Busonenengo is my place. And this is only a small part – the most pleasant part – of what our job really is: cultivating rice.
It all started with a chance encounter I had with Matteo, a young farmer from Olcenengo – a small neighbouring village. Matteo immediately helped us in this undertaking, and I attended a course on History and Institutions of the Arab World at the University with his wife. Meeting Matteo and his wife, who are now the backbones of Busonengo, was a classic example of serendipity. Matteo and I designed our own way to grow rice – thanks to Matteo’s experience and our shared vision of an environmentally-friendly style of agriculture. We studied and designed Terreamano, rice transplanted by hand with zero weeds. An ambitious project of rice cultivation with the old transplanting technique, now abandoned and replaced by machinery and pesticides.
In short, our dream for Busonengo is to revive it, find new stimuli and people who can live there, maybe open a small restaurant. (Once upon a time, there were two taverns.) We have so many many ideas, and we hope to realize them all sooner or later.
After this global pandemic (which we all hope will be over soon), we woke up from a kind of trance – from a life somehow catalogued and full of unhealthy habits. For many, there has been a return to nature and to different priorities. For you – considering that you live and work in direct contact with nature – what do you think will happen in the coming years? Will we be able to rise above this global frenzy and return to a simpler way of life or is it an irreversible process?
During the pandemic, I believed that everything would change – including everyone's habits. I believed that the quarantine would have taught us to slow down; to no longer fill our lives with a thousand, perhaps useless (and certainly redundant) activities, but I'm afraid the period was a little too… "short"? Now it seems that we are all slowly returning to the same frenzy of before.
For our family, the kids are 12 and 13 years old, and this is the first time we have really and truly lived in the countryside: It’s paradoxical! For the first time, we started a vegetable garden from its seeds; for the first time, we truly and deeply witnessed the arrival of spring; for the first time, the boys spent the whole day cycling and exploring the outdoors. In contact with the animals – watching eggs hatch in their nests. However, many signs of lockdown will remain fixed in our society: One is a desire for nature, and the other – breadmaking.
In short, a small thorn has been wedged and pushed into our sides: There is greater attention paid to the products we’re buying; people are more likely to learn how to select and research food items they’re having delivered to their homes. Online sales have increased exponentially. We have even created a website for selling our rice, and it has been quite successful! It can be done!
Pictures: Dario Fusaro