There are people who open a company because they see a market. And then there are people who completely change their way of living because, at some point in their life, they start asking themselves different questions.
The history of the Minardo pasta factory was born like this.
Not from a business plan. But from a search. A research on food, on health and the relationship that exists between what we eat today and the way we will live tomorrow. Long before anyone started talking about conscious eating, biodiversity o ancient grains, Giorgio Minardo had already started studying all this.
For a very simple reason: he was curious to know what really was good food.
With a degree in electronic engineering and a job in Turin, for personal needs Giorgio approaches the world of macrobiotics. But he doesn't mean it as a trend.
Or like a diet. Rather, as a completely different way of looking at and taking in food.
That's where your perspective changes: after a macrobiotic point (still active) in Modica and begins to make his fellow citizens understand that food cannot be judged only by its taste. It matters how they are born, The soil in which the raw materials grow counts; it matters how these are transformed; it matters what they contain e.g, above all, what they don't contain.
We are at the end of the 90s of the last century and for Giorgio food ceases to be simply something to be consumed. It becomes a well-being tool. A cultural tool. And even a political gesture. Because choosing a food also means choosing the agricultural model we want to support.
It was the wheat.
When everyone talks about pasta as the final product, Giorgio begins to ask himself a different question.
Which grain does it come from?? The answer, Often, he didn't like it. Varieties selected almost exclusively to produce more. Agriculture increasingly dependent on chemistry. More and more uniform fields. Grains increasingly distant from those that had accompanied the history of Sicily for centuries. Find out, studying and informing, that one of variety of wheat most used to make pasta, from 1975, had been modified with gamma rays. So he starts looking for something else. Literally: going to meet farmers, farmers and farmers, around the Iblei and Sicily. And not simply out of nostalgia, voted to the past, but for the desire to build a different food future: fairer, healthier, more sustainable. Start a path of research and collaboration with the Experimental Station for Grain Growing of Caltagirone, dedicating himself to the multiplication and cultivation of local populations of Sicilian grains, those prior to the genetic transformations implemented by 1975.
That's where your perspective changes: after a macrobiotic point (still active) in Modica and begins to make his fellow citizens understand that food cannot be judged only by its taste. It matters how they are born, The soil in which the raw materials grow counts; it matters how these are transformed; it matters what they contain e.g, above all, what they don't contain.
We are at the end of the 90s of the last century and for Giorgio food ceases to be simply something to be consumed. It becomes a well-being tool. A cultural tool. And even a political gesture. Because choosing a food also means choosing the agricultural model we want to support.
It's not just agricultural research, but the attempt to get healthy food, as memory teaches: bring back to the fields those grains that for centuries had nourished the Sicilian people and the biodiversity of its territory.
From that work was born an idea then considered almost utopian: create a pasta produced exclusively with flours obtained from “ancient grains” Sicilians. On the street, but, era tutt’altro che semplice.
Mancavano i coltivatori disposti a investire su varietà considerate poco produttive e poco convenienti rispetto ai grani “moderni”, agricoltori che accettassero la sfida di raccolti meno abbondanti (più lavoro, più rischio), pur di restituire dignità a semi che raccontavano la storia agricola della Sicilia.
E mancavano molini disposti a lavorarle mantenendone la purezza e la separazione; mancavano pastifici disponibili a sperimentare un prodotto nuovo, fuori dagli schemi dell’industria tradizionale. Era necessario ricostruire un’intera filiera, partendo praticamente da zero.
Dopo anni di ricerche, prove e sperimentazioni, con diversi mulini e pastifici, in the 2007 Giorgio Minardo fa una scelta decisiva: aprire a Modica il proprio pastificio artigianale per dare forma concreta alla sua visione e produrre direttamente la propria linea di pasta da “ancient grains” Sicilians.
Questi grani hanno la particolarità di avere un very weak gluten, highly digestible, che viene assorbito più facilmente dall’intestino e non crea disturbi alimentari.
Quella scelta, nata prima che il tema della biodiversità diventasse centrale nel dibattito sull’agricoltura e sull’alimentazione, ha contribuito ad aprire una nuova strada. Una strada che ha riportato attenzione su un patrimonio genetico e culturale straordinario, fatto di sapori locali e saperi contadini e un diverso modo di intendere il rapporto tra uomo, cibo e ambiente.
La storia di Giorgio Minardo è la storia di una scommessa controcorrente: believe in what seemed outdated and demonstrate that the future, sometimes, it can arise precisely from the recovery of one's roots.
«Biodiversity is not a luxury.
It is the best insurance we can leave for the future"
It's a word that is often misunderstood. He finishes ancient grains, now common, was born for media needs.
Actually, they are local grains, native, authentic and specific to a territory: seeds that have not been modified to increase yield, as happened since 1975. Rediscovering them means defending the biodiversity of a territory; enhance varieties capable of maintaining a deep connection with the territory from which they come.
Each grain has its own characteristics. The native ones of Sicily sono più resistenti alla siccità e alle malattie ed essendo di taglia alta (anche 180 cm), soffocano da soli le infestanti e non necessitano di interventi e prodotti chimici.
Per questo non ci interessa standardizzare tutto. La natura non è standard. E noi non vogliamo che lo diventi.
Molti iniziano chiedendosi come ottenere una certificazione. Noi abbiamo fatto il percorso contrario. Abbiamo deciso prima come volevamo coltivare.
La certificazione è arrivata dopo, in the 2018. Per noi il biologico significa lavorare senza cercare scorciatoie.
Accettare che la natura abbia i suoi tempi. Rispettare il terreno e fare le giuste rotazioni. Proteggere gli insetti utili. Difendere la fertilità dei campi. Produrre meno, if necessary. Perché un terreno impoverito produce alimenti impoveriti. E noi non vogliamo questo.
La storia di Giorgio Minardo è la storia di una scommessa controcorrente: believe in what seemed outdated and demonstrate that the future, sometimes, it can arise precisely from the recovery of one's roots.
Questa frase, negli anni, è diventata la bussola di ogni decisione, dentro l’azienda agricola Minardo. Prima del fatturato. Prima delle mode. Prima delle richieste del mercato.
Se un prodotto non convince Giorgio Minardo dal punto di vista nutrizionale, semplicemente non entra in filiera. È una regola che vale per la pasta. Ma vale anche per tutto il resto, a cominciare dal grano e dal metodo di coltivazione che deve seguire rigidi disciplinare di produzione, condivisi con i coltivatori.
Oggi migliaia di persone scelgono Minardo non soltanto perché cercano una buona pasta. Ci scelgono perché sanno che dietro ogni prodotto c’è qualcuno che, da oltre vent’anni, continua a farsi la stessa domanda:
“Fa davvero bene alle persone?”
Noi crediamo: