Agriculture of the farm

The farm Azienda Agraria Musignano includes over 200 hec­tares of total land surface close to the village of Ponticelli (Città della Pieve). The farm lands are loca­ted both in the valley of Chiana, and on the surrounding hills. The alti­tude of the agricultural lands ranges from about 250 meters above sea level (low­lands in the farm represent 60% of the total) to about 400 meters above sea level (the remaining 40% of farm land is on hill slopes).

In the lowlands area emphasis for far­ming is on cereals, sunflower and grass­lands, with a long rotation that includes 3 years of alfalfa, both for produc­tion of hay as well as certified seeds. The crops cultivated are wheat (both normal and durum), maize (corn), sunflower and sugar beet, al­though this latter has been recently replaced by sunflower and corn. The hills are cover­ed by wood­lands, vineyards (about se­ven hec­tar­es, recently replan­ted) and olive groves (about 1.250 trees). Al­most all vineyards belong to the DOC of Colli del Trasi­meno, while the olives groves belong to the PDO of Umbria, sub-zone of Colli Orvietani.

The long rotations with grasslands, the work done in keeping the drainage net­work in good conditions, the use of or­ganic fertilizers and the adoption of techniques that respect nature (e.g. use of mechanical weed-killing methods in­stead of herbicides on cereal cultivation, and the use of products for organic ag­riculture in grape and olive produc­tion) give testimony of a love for land and nature, over the possible trends and fashions of the moment.

The farm is organised as a company, where the members of the Andreoli family have all shares and take care of the direction and commercial lead of the farm, while the manpower consists of hired workers.

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