RES RUSTICA is the first collaborative micro-farms brand platform
A 92 BCE edict of the censors in Rome, as reported by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, reads: “All new that is done contrary to the usage and the customs of our ancestors, seems not to be right”. If that was believed to be wise in 92 BCE, we could not agree more in 2015 CE.
The food industry today is in fact interested in selling one consistent average variety everywhere, to everybody. Go bananas: more than 1.000 varieties still exists in the world but merely one, the Cavendish, is produced intensively to be exported globally. According to FAO, 95% of all calories consumed globally come just from 30 species. You can appreciate how far we’ve gone into destroying our biodiverse heritage.
In Latin, RES RUSTICA means “things of the field” or simply “agriculture”. That’s where we reckon food should belong to. Not to disquieting laboratories nor glossy supermarkets. Unfortunately, markets are today dominated by big industrial players and most consumers baffled by disorienting labels.
We therefore decided to set up this collaborative brand in order to bring farming, harvesting, producing and marketing biodiverse produce back to square one, to the local communities that own this precious heritage we all need to treasure.
Our goal is to curate, support and market local cultivars working only with micro-farmers who are already growing them. RES RUSTICA is a unique platform that will also deliver content to make the whole journey a revealing, transparent experience. From planting to packaging.
When you buy RES RUSTICA you buy in fact a hyper-local product and a personal farming story, different each time, brought to a larger scale by the power of the collaborative branding platform.
These days, scandals of all sorts are sadly surfacing regarding the King of the Mediterranean cuisine: whether is about illegally blending low quality oils passed off as pure Extra Virgin or mixing non-European, dubious oils and sold it with a Made in Italy tag on.
Local producers struggle to deliver decent communication to consumers regarding why they should pay more for a healthy, premium quality, artisanal product whilst some greedy so-called entrepreneurs are cheating everybody with no respect for public health nor commercial decency.
This is rubbish and it’s time for a radical change in food culture, which involves everyone to be aware of what’s going on in the fields.
Most micro-farms around the world managed to create an eco-friendly subsistence production. “Food is your medicine”, they may tell you: their only goal is the presence of nutrients and the absence of anything else. It’s that simple, really.
We’ll be starting from the archetypical staple of human diet, the most underrated amongst super foods, the green gold: a supreme Extra-Virgin Olive Oil from Ceglie Messapica, Salento, Italia. A gift from the heart by us founders, Guido Mercati and Jodie Whileman, and backed up by a second batch produced by Dr. Angelo Giordano and Valerio Tanzarella, followed by many other micro-farmers from the same area.
All the Ceglie Messapica collections will be analysed to validate their nutritional values: with the Mercati collection from Contrada Fedele Grande, for example, we’ve reached an astonishing 309 mg/kg of Tocopherols, the most absorbable form of Vitamin E for the human body. Together with beautiful green tomatoes and freshly-cut grass aromas replenishing your taste buds.