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In 2002 Estancia Buenaventura inaugurated a new project - the retail sale in the United States of organic polenta made from corn grown at the Estancia. The polenta is sold in the US under the tradename “de la Estancia” by a US company called Argentine Products, LLC which is owned by the four partners in Estancia Buenaventura. The polenta is produced and packaged at an independent mill in Argentina operated by a company named Rivara SA. Rivara’s mill is certified as an organic mill and it handles corn exclusively. The resulting polenta is certified 100% organic under the applicable rules of the US Department of Agriculture. Since 2005, with the withdrawal of the Estancia from organic agriculture, the corn has come from another organic farm under contract to our project.
The justification underlying the project is that the corn grown in Argentina, when milled, results in a superior polenta. Argentine corn is a sub-tropical variety of orange corn called “flint” corn which is not successfully grown in the Northern Hemisphere. Flint corn requires a much longer growing season – up to 7 months in the field including a period of natural drying in the sun, nearly twice as long as the corn grown in North America or Europe. Of course the yield of flint corn is substantially less than for common corn but lower quantity is a small price to pay for higher quality. The physical characteristics of flint corn are different from ordinary corn – flint corn is harder, has a higher protein content, has less starch and yields a product which is more intensely yellow in color. The hardness of the kernels is fundamental because it allows us to more closely control the milling process and we can obtain a finer grind of polenta. This in turn results in the polenta being smoother and creamier. The low starch level means that the polenta is less gluey. The grind and the low starch level also mean that our product cooks much faster than traditional polenta - de la Estancia polenta cooks in 1 minute compared to 10-20 minutes for most other polenta. But our polenta is not instant, pre-cooked or treated in any way. It simply cooks fast naturally. All of the organic polenta which we sell is made exclusively from Argentine corn grown at a single farm. We maintain full control from the time the corn is planted through harvest, milling and marketing of the polenta at the retail level in supermarkets in the US. In fact, we can trace each bag of de la Estancia polenta back to a particular field and we can tell the exact dates when that field was planted and harvested. In 2005 we entered into a national marketing agreement with Source Atlantique, Inc. of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Source is now responsible for distribution of de la Estancia polenta throughout the US. You can contact Source as follows:
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