Droughts, floods, failing crops: Weather extremes test Italy's agricultural heartland

By Michele Novaga

MILAN, Italy (AA) — As 2024 shapes up to be the hottest year on record, Italy’s agriculture faces unprecedented challenges.

According to data from the European climate change service Copernicus, 2024 is likely to set a new record as the hottest year ever, and the first year with global temperature increases above the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This trend has increasingly stressed Italian agriculture, which has felt the impact of climate change for years.

The Mediterranean Sea has never been warmer, fueling intense weather events like those recently seen in Italy, particularly in the Romagna region, already hard-hit by similar conditions in May 2023.

For Italian farmers, especially in Lombardy, the repercussions are severe. “This year has been especially tough, not only in Lombardy where there are 30-40% losses on nearly all crops, but also in the south, for different reasons,” explained Paolo Butera, secretary of Coldiretti in Milan and Lodi, Italy’s largest farmers’ association.

“In the north, we’ve faced water bombs and floods, with 240 extreme weather events since autumn began, compared to just 80 during the same period last year. In the south, a drought of proportions unseen in recent years has devastated water reserves to their lowest levels, with some parts of Sicily losing up to 70% of the olive and durum wheat harvests,” Butera told Anadolu.

South of Milan, maize fields stretch across tens of thousands of hectares. Yet even in November, many remain unharvested — a rare sight so late in the season.

Gian Enrico Grugni, who co-runs a farm in Cervignano d'Adda, 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) south of Milan, manages 290 hectares (about 717 acres) and raises cattle. He shares the challenges they face as they race to complete harvesting before the first frosts.

“We’re harvesting in November what we should have harvested in August. Production is very low in both quantity and quality. But the difficulty lies in that the soils are waterlogged,” he said, adding that this delayed sowing, weakened plant growth, and complicated harvesting.

“We’re dealing with dry losses of €120 ($127) per hectare,” he explained, showing a cob that yields just a third of the usual product.

“We were already coming out of a bad period,” Grugni continued.

Underlining that climate issues are not just a one-year problem, he said 2022 had brought drought and 2023 hail and storms. “For three years now, we’ve been hit by extreme weather. It is becoming harder to farm under this tropicalization of the climate. We are an open-air factory, we cannot just rely on our own possibilities. We just have to hope that the weather is on our side.”

Cold and wet conditions continue to compound the difficulties across the region.

Coldiretti reported on Oct. 15 that this year’s harvest in Lombardy, Italy’s agricultural powerhouse, will be unusually poor. Maize, planted across about 290,000 hectares, has seen major losses, with one-third of the crop meant for livestock feed left unsown.

Further losses are anticipated across the region: barley and wheat yields are down by up to 35%, grain maize by up to 30%, with some areas reporting losses of 50%. Heavy rains in late October threaten to push these numbers higher, jeopardizing this year’s harvest as fields remain too wet to work.

Other key crops such as barley, wheat (down 35%), tomatoes (down 30%), grapes (down 20-25%), rice (down 20-30%), and pumpkins (down 30%) have also suffered. Even Italy’s prized wines and olive oil are struggling, with yields dropping below recent averages.

The toll is apparent in the farm of Marco Curtarelli, stretching 130 hectares with half dedicated to maize. Situated in the Lombardy countryside, it is just a few hundred meters from the Po River. Less than two years ago, the waterway’s low levels exposed ancient Roman relics from its bed. Today, it is brimming with water and nearing flood levels.

“We’ve had 1,650 millimeters (nearly 65 inches) of rain since January. This year’s weather has complicated of the process,” Curtarelli explained, fighting through muddy fields to save what remains. “We’re behind on harvesting several crops because spring rains delayed sowing and now, autumn rains have left the soil slippery.”

“This year, between maize, soybeans, and cereals, I’ve lost between €100,000 and €150,000,” he added, his voice heavy, before returning to his tractor to salvage what he can.