OUR TERRITORY

ITALY represents only 0.5% of the world's surface area but thanks to the winds of great seas and the air of the high mountains, allows it to be the most biodiverse country in the world. These are Italian facts :

• The 1st country in the world for types of edible vegitables : there are 7,000 types (the 2nd country is Brazil with 3,300 types).
• Any Italian region has more plant types than any state in Europe.
• The 2nd country in the world with 58,000 different types of animals.
• The 1st country in the world for autochthonous vineyards: there are 1,200 (the 2nd country is France with 222).
• The 1st country in the world for olive cultivars: there are 533 (the 2nd country is Spain with 70).
• The 1st country in the world for durum wheat cultivars varieties: there are 144 (the largest producer in the world, the USA, have 6 varieties).

This biodiversity has made our food and wine system unique in the world and has also allowed us to have the greatest human diversity. We are the country with the most indigenous ethnic groups in the world, thanks to a history that starts 40,000 years ago, where Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, both from Africa, met only in Italy. For these reasons, tens of thousands of years later, Italy had the first great empire leader in the world in both social and political terms and, after another 1,500 years, it had the Renaissance. For these reasons today Italy holds 70% of the world's artistic heritage and, thanks to its biodiversity, the most beautiful landscapes in the world. And who are the landscape designers? The farmers. And farmers are the children of the wind. We are Italians!