Then it happens that the messages in the bottles get somewhere. And that the newspapers end up helping someone: "Your article that appeared on July 10 was enlightening," writes Giacomo Bartoloni, a consultant for Italian Luxury Taste in Corridonia, Macerata province. "After two trips to Addis Ababa together with Marco Valle, the owner of the company, on December 4 we signed the agreement for the distribution of teff flour produced by Molino Ture. We have exclusive rights for continental Europe, Russia and all of Asia except China."
Giacomo Bartoloni writes to me two days before Christmas. And this is a Christmas story. In every sense of the word. Marco Valle, the owner of Italian Luxury Taste, is an entrepreneur from the Marche region who usually deals with import-export of wines and luxury food products. But he has a daughter, Sofia, who didn't even happen to turn five on Christmas Day, and she has celiac disease. So Marco Valle knows the importance of gluten-free grains. He knows how sought after these superfoods can be in a West increasingly willing to pay dearly for a health-conscious diet.
Teff, however, grows only in Ethiopia and Eritrea, two thousand meters above sea level. These are ears that are thousands of years old, and more importantly, they are ears that the government in Addis Ababa has always forbidden to export because they form the basis of the Ethiopian population's diet. Until a few months ago: after three years of bureaucratic rigmarole, it is the Ture sisters themselves who obtained license number 001. The first one, in the whole country, that authorizes them to export teff abroad. "If I could sell it in Europe at ten, twenty times the price it is today here on the Ethiopian market, I could pay the farmers who supply my mill more," Sozit Ture confesses to me in July, "I could reinvest the export money in agricultural modernization. We could double production." And send all the children in these countryside and slums to school.
Teff as a good business. Teff as a good business: "I had been pondering the potential of this cereal for a year," says the entrepreneur, who together with his consultant had also drawn up a feasibility study. Meeting the mill with the only export license in all of Ethiopia was the spring that triggered the business: "The Ture sisters," says Marco Valle, "committed to supply us with a 200-quintal container of flour per day for the whole year. Won't that be too much? "We want to introduce teff to the main food processing industries in Italy," says Valle. "Besides being gluten-free, this cereal has a low glycemic index, contains as much albumin protein as an egg, and is rich in potassium. We believe its superfood properties are so interesting that it could become strategic for all large companies interested in mass production of foods for celiacs, diabetics, vegans and sportsmen." Marco Valle has Barilla, Ferrero, Galbusera in mind: that's why he thinks big.
For the Ture sisters, the agreement with Italian Luxury Taste means, above all, significant income of valuable currency with which to make investments. It means dreams again for their children of the American universities they had attended. Grandpa Ture was the first Ethiopian to trade in industrial machinery with the Chinese. A pioneer who saw far ahead, as today China is the country's largest investor and most important trading partner. Then the money ran out, the Chinese backing also. So, Sozit and Muna had to return home. But they rolled up their sleeves, and started again from the bottom.
In Italy, meanwhile, teff flour has already landed: "I brought it to my wife," says Marco Valle, "she made cookies with it for my daughter Sofia. Christmas cookies, of course.
