Giovanni Pess is the owner of the company that bears his name, located in the Sardinia region. It is a business that produces large quantities of vegetables, but it is specialised in the Sardinian spiny artichoke, “For more than 40 years, we have been farming artichokes, to the point that today the production of Sardinian spiny artichokes represents the company’s core business”.
The POD Sardinian spiny artichoke is different from the other varieties because of its delicate and aromatic taste and of its characteristic shape: it has a long conical shape with a pointy apex which has peculiar yellow spines on the top.
“The artichoke season is quite long. The transplanting starts halfway through July. Then, the harvesting starts halfway through November to the first ten days of May. Customers have little information on this artichoke cultivar, and therefore this variety is particularly difficult to genetically manage it. In fact, there is no varietal or genetic research on it at all”.
“At the beginning of this 2018/2019 campaign, we experienced some issues related to the unusually high temperatures. For a few days, temperatures here in Sardinia have been reaching 20°C – this is not an ideal situation for this kind of crop. Climate change causes several problems to the production of artichoke. Even though the campaign has started for a few days, we will start the big part of the harvesting only within ten days thus leaving to the market all the decisional power”.
“We produce almost 40.000 flower heads per hectare. If the weather will be as it should, we will be able to ship our volumes within 3-4 months. Yet, if the weather will not be good, we will produce 40.000 flower heads within not even two months thus resulting in an offer overlapping and in a market saturation which will inevitably affect the prices”.
“This type of artichoke is mostly consumed in Genoa, Milan and Turin. We market 6 millions of flower heads through different sales channels. We rely on a renowned distributor for our placement within many distribution chains such as MMR, Auchan and Esselunga”.
“This produce has very important organoleptic characteristics. It is rich in iron, potassium, minerals and fibres. This vegetable can be tasted raw if it has been carefully cleaned”.
Info:
Azienda Agricola Giovanni Pes
Via Gramsci
07030 Viddalba - Sassari
Tel.: +39 340 5596344
Email: info@carciofosardogiopes.it
Web: carciofosardogiopes.it