Reviving An Ancient Grain In Le Marche: How One Farmer’s Mission To Commercialize Farro Is Going Against The Grain

By Donovan Eveslage

URBINO, Italy — Massimo Fiorani, a 55-year-old farmer with sun-kissed skin, surveyed the rolling farmland seven miles outside this famous Renaissance city. Dressed in jeans and a partly buttoned shirt, he gazed across a golden field of what looks like wheat he planted months earlier, a stalk of which he cradled lovingly in his arms.

Only that isn’t wheat. 

It’s farro, an ancient cereal grain that Italians have eaten for centuries but has remained hidden in the culinary shadow of pasta.

And that’s something Fiorani has dedicated his professional life to changing, telling anyone who will listen: “I want farro to be spread worldwide.”

He has a tall challenge ahead.

While farro has a long history in human diets — originating in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and having fed Egyptian kings and Rome’s legions — it was pushed aside by wheat centuries ago, especially in Italy. 

For instance, the average Italian consumes almost 56 pounds of pasta yearly, by far the highest in the world. That’s one reason the country has 120 companies producing 3.9 million tons of pasta a year, easily the world’s leader.

Farro, meanwhile, hardly registers on the Italian market, much less worldwide. It is only grown on a few acres here in Le Marche and across the Apennines in Tuscany. Indeed, for some time farro was used primarily as animal feed.

But in the 1980s farro began gaining enthusiasm from the growing market of health-conscious consumers who recognized it as a healthier alternative to wheat pasta. Farro, known for its nutty flavor and chewy texture, is a great source of fiber, iron, protein, Vitamin B3, zinc and magnesium. It can help in preventing diabetes; farro also improves heart health and cognitive function and is better suited to those with sensitive stomachs, and for those who are gluten intolerant.

And compared to most wheat farming, farro can be grown without fertilizer and is more climate-adaptable.

All of which Fiorani was expounding on one June afternoon at a conference on his farm, Prometeo Farr. He organizes these events to add more fuel to his drive — and to elevate farro higher in the consciousness of consumers in Italy and the world.

Inviting local residents for private tours that showcase the production of farro from start to finish is one way Fiorani hopes to keep the ancient grain’s tradition alive in Le Marche. He educates visitors about the different types of farro spelt Prometeo uses for their finished products, including monococcum spelt, spelt dicocco, and spelta spelt. The showcase also takes visitors through a timeline of the history of each species of spelt, from Monococum spelt being the oldest to spelta spelt being the youngest.

Fiorani’s penchant for farro makes him a bit of an anomaly when it comes to his competitors and neighboring farmers. He uses farro cereal as a starting point and manufactures it into different kinds of pasta, hors d’oeuvres, and flour to make products like penne pasta, biscotti, and semolina.

Fiorani repeatedly said anyone using farro must have “respect for the product,” with a big smile spreading from cheek to cheek.

In Urbino, as the sun sank over the hills of the surrounding countryside, Giuseppe Portanova strode across Via Ceseare Battisi shuttling plates of food to hungry diners. A series of tattoos stretching down the 34-year-old’s forearms sharply contrasted his pearly white apron. The word “bene” — meaning “good” — is visibly inked on Portanova’s knuckles as he clutches a steaming plate of seafood soup.

The chef wears a contagious smile. And he has good reason to. His restaurant, Portanova is the only Michelin Star restaurant in Urbino — and one of the few incorporating farro into its menu, which includes bold dishes like pigeon and pheasant breast, croaker fish filet and pasta dishes topped with smoked eel and sea urchins. 

Portanova emerges from the kitchen carrying a dish called Pisci — farro noodles dressed in a pea sauce, and topped with chunks of eel, served on a marble plate. He later serves a thick tomato-based seafood soup, containing a small filet of sea bream, raw mantis shrimp, mussels and clams, all served over a heaping mound of farro grain cereal.

Portanova, who started as a waiter in Urbino’s Ducale Palazzo, opened Portanova in 2019, amid the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic. Now this rising culinary star features farro prominently on his menu.

Indeed, this sort of validation gives local farro farmer Massimo Fiorani hope this ancient grain can, indeed, be “spread worldwide.”