Rice : a submerged world

This study aims to investigate, from an anthropological perspective, the transition of rice production in the north-west of the Po Valley from a quantitative model, strongly oriented towards maximizing yields per hectare, to a qualitative one, more attentive to territorial, environmental and cultural aspects. The first part of the thesis reconstructs, through the analysis and comparison of documentary sources, the long and complex parable that introduced rice into European culture, first as a medicine, then as a food. Large space is dedicated to the transformation, undergone over five centuries, by the territory between Vercelli, Novara and Pavia, which today constitutes the main production district for rice in Europe. This change has left traces not only on the landscape but also on the culture of its inhabitants, shaped by the specific needs of this crop. Some of the most significant elements of local folklore, which survived the Green Revolution which upset the social balance of these territories in the space of a handful of years around the 1960s, have been investigated through field research to evaluate what functions they perform today for those it keeps them alive, in renewed forms and ways. The second part of the work focuses on the environmental protection strategies put in place by some rice farmers both with the intention of finding new models of economic competitiveness and to limit as much as possible the negative externalities produced by rice cultivation. This objective is pursued with greater determination by farmers who have embraced rice-growing models based on agro-ecological principles, such as the community of "Bio-veri" of Rovasenda. Through this case study, conducted in the field with qualitative interviews, I wanted to reconstruct the path which, from the first unsuccessful pioneering attempts of the Stocchi family, first defined a functional method for the cultivation of organic rice, then extended it to a growing number of local farmers, leading them to collaborate with universities and research institutions and finally drive this community to create the "Piedmontese Rice Biodistrict" association. A project of environmental regeneration of the spaces dedicated to agriculture that invites conventional rice grower colleagues to dialogue and that brings the focus to the fundamental relationship between food, the territory on which production insists, the people who live there, the plants and the earth. Rice returns to boast of being a "plant of civilization" and health in a broad and positive sense: a plant capable not only of calming the appetites of the world but also of nourishingrelationships, connecting people to environment that surrounds them.