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.
