Rice farmer
Vicent Dominguís
Business
Pego Natura · Pego · Film: What Pego Kept
Season
Season 1, Costa Blanca
Pillar
The Seeds
Location
Pego Marshes, Costa Blanca
From half a kilo of forgotten rice seeds, his family brought Pego’s own rice variety back to life.
The marsh at Pego is fed by underground springs. Clean water rises between the mountains and the sea. Around two hundred small farmers grow rice here, inside a protected natural park.
Fifty years ago this marsh almost became a holiday resort. The fields were abandoned in the 1970s, and for years the plan was to build on them. The natural park was declared in 1994, and rice came back a year later. One rice was still missing.
Arròs Bombó was born in Pego. At the end of the nineteenth century seven mills in the town processed it, and it was sold as a luxury grain. Then Spanish farming chased bigger harvests. The small Pego plots could not compete, and by the 1960s the Bombó had disappeared.
Vicent Dominguís, an agricultural engineer, became one of its loudest voices. Pego Natura joined the provincial council, the university and the rice growers' cooperative to look for seed. After years of searching they found five hundred grams.
That half kilo was planted by hand on four hundred square metres. In September 2015 it gave 113 kilos of rice. A year later it gave two thousand. Today Bombó carries the Parcs Naturals mark, belongs to the DO Arròs de València and is cooked in the kitchen of Quique Dacosta.
His son Vicent came home to farm beside him. In a region where young people usually leave the land, that choice matters. Bombó suits this salty, wet ground and resists the fungus that attacks modern rice. So fewer treatments go into a wetland full of spring water, and the birds stay in the marsh.
Where did those five hundred grams come from, and who kept them all those years? Watch the film and meet the family who gave Pego its own rice back.
Watch The Episode
Gallery
Featured episode
Featured articles
See other Food Heroes
Summary
Vicent Dominguis senior and his son Vicent junior are rice farmers in Pego, in the Pego-Oliva Marsh, Marina Alta, Alicante, Spain. Through Pego Natura they restored the Bombó rice variety (Bombón in Castilian), which had been missing from cultivation for over fifty years, by tracing the knowledge of the region's oldest farmers. The rice is now served on Quique Dacosta's menu, and their farming is returning the wetlands as a habitat for birds.
Key Facts
- Business
- Pego Natura · Pego · Film: What Pego Kept
- Role
- Rice farmer
- Location
- Pego Marshes, Costa Blanca
- Protected area
- Pego-Oliva Marsh Natural Park1
- Pillar
- The Seeds
- Produces
- Bombó rice (Bombón in Castilian)
- Protects
- The Bombó rice variety; wetland biodiversity and bird habitat
- Practice
- Restoration of a heritage variety; marsh farmed as a living wetland
- Recognition
- Served on Quique Dacosta's menu
- SDG touchpoints
- 15 · 2 · 13 · 11
- Episode
- Episode 02 · What Pego Kept