Traditional eating, local, excellent

Eating on a farm is a unique experience. Farm dining is very diverse because it changes depending on the location, the seasons and what the individual farms offer. Some farms choose to offer their guests a basic menu with a limited choice of dishes, while others develop extensive and articulated menus that include special packages (for children or for special diets). There are farms that provide picnic areas where you can buy farm products and cook your own meals yourself, and others that combine meals with traditional cooking courses. Everything is built around local products that mainly come from the farm and the surrounding territory and are sustainable. Eating local products means in fact contributing to the conservation of the environment, preserving biodiversity, and keeping the local territory inhabited and vibrant.
The real competitive advantage of agritourism, very difficult to achieve in other types of dining, is the freshness of the produce – just picked – along with other locally produced raw materials that are carefully checked in every phase of processing. This translates into tastes and flavours that are very hard to imitate and much appreciated by guests.
It is well known that Italy has the broadest range of typical local foods in the world. In addition, it boasts the largest number of high quality products that carry the European labels PDO and PGI (at present 248, including cheeses, salami, fruits and vegetables, breads and baked goods and other processed products), 448 wines of origin, and many thousands of traditional food products (that is, typical products with at least a 25-year history, surveyed and included on a national list), and it is in agritourism that these specialities find their chosen place of production and consumption.
By law, a farm that provides food is required to produce a significant share of the products used in the preparation of meals, but beyond this requirement food is the calling card of those who work in agritourism, an important part of the character of the service.
Agritourism food means being able to purchase specialities to take home as well as sitting down to enjoy dishes prepared according to the best local traditions, but it may also mean learning to cook (many farms are now excellent cooking schools), being trained to recognize inimitable tastes and flavours, and discovering the techniques and little secrets of the production processes right there where they take place.
Many visitors choose agritourism at particular times of year, such as the during the grape harvest, the picking and pressing of olives, grain reaping or the gathering of fruits and vegetables. Others want to harvest with their own hands the crops from vegetable gardens and orchards or to take home the ingredients of the recipes they have tasted and make the same dishes at home.
In short, everything to do with traditional ‘made in Italy’ food can be found and experienced in Italian agritourism