PROMOTER
ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROTECTION
OF MAIZE FOR POLENTA - VALTELLINA QUALITY
On seeds that are disappearing.
The idea of creating this sponsoring association was born watching the rare farmers families still sowing and cultivating polenta corn, with old and fine varieties of native corn. In the past time offered us delicious and tasty meals. Imports and dissemination, has made us forget the joy of fragrance of a typical dish from Valtellina.
The same has happened with the seeds of buckwheat and rye, well acclimated varieties in Valtellina, now dispersed by not seeding.
Technological progress is expected and enjoyed by everyone but our homegrown seeds, cultivation once flourishing, disappear definitely.
Farmers prefer the convenience of hybrid seeds calibrated and more productive, decreeing unwittingly dispersion and disappearance of our local varieties.
That could be circumvent, restoring, at least in part, the specific culture of our tradition that is: you plant my local seed! In return I pay you the value that you produce planting your corn. Exchange that would save the seeds of good native polenta.
So it also happens in the chain of supermarkets. For convenience everything is purchased from the big mill, which sells following marketing strategies. Are imposed packages and recipes which are not always linked to the tradition and that kill the palate of consumers erasing the memory off our good local yellow polenta, with a strong taste, that does not cause heartburn being full of the flower that strengthens it.
Stands in supermarkets, with the traditional homegrown meal, remain a mirage: if the modern farmer were able to enter and occupy them, that would give to him unthinkable profits.
Unequal is the struggle of the few to survive the continuity of tradition, before the invasion of other corn meal. The selection of the finest wines celebrated by the gourmet is useless if then toast in front of a laid table with a polenta that gets pleasing only if stuffed with butter and cheeses.
Il molino del Dosso coltiva una varietà di granoturco, ormai disperso che si The Mill of Dosso cultivates a variety of corn, now rare, which was sown in the nineteenth century; to save it we have created a trade-mark called RossoValtellina Agrivan®, to protect and save the quality, as we have been able to do with other typical products.
This young farm started in 2004, quickly realized that the quality of corn for polenta RossoValtellina pays the dispenser and finds the favor of table companion.
This variety of corn characterized by a long twelve lines cob, with blood-colored grains, has quality and flavor so intense, to offer a very tasty polenta to estimators.
Our aim is to find friends, passionates and farmers who want to join a movement per species, to save these indigenous seeds for a typical Valtellina dish.
For small farmers, there is the opportunity to retrive important exclusive cereals market niche, as it can be for the yellow and typical “polenta Taragna” of Bitto Valley forgotten by the introduction of mixed flour or just never sown in the territory.
History tells us that the valley people, since the arrival of maize at the end of the eighteenth century, have planted it in their fields sacrificing hay, given the strong crop yields of maize. Differently, in high-altitude villages, the buckwheat was grown in soils not very fertile, as second seed after the harvest of rye.
The lower valley for its rich resources of growings, has always cooked the yellow mixture!
Let’s keep this tradition before it be finally forgotten by everyone!