Climate change: crisis for Italian agriculture and aquaculture

From corn that doesn't grow without irrigation, to mussels that die due to the 30 degrees reached by the sea, from fruit that burns on plants even in Trentino, to the salt wedge that flows up rivers making water resources unusable: climate change is literally rewriting Italian agriculture and aquaculture. This is the picture that emerges from the survey conducted by Legacoop Agroalimentare among the associated cooperatives and which gives the image of a production system put under pressure by climate change.

The system, underlines the president of Legacoop Agroalimentare, Cristian Maretti, "is holding up thanks to the investments made in recent years and to a spring which, for once, worked in favor of businesses: the results would have been much more negative. However, if we look to the future we cannot think that it will always go like this, and therefore we need to act structurally".

The salt wedge further complicates the picture: in some areas the phenomenon travels for tens of kilometers along the waterways, making irrigation virtually impossible. It particularly affects the Po, but is also recorded in Puglia and risks further compromising the availability of water resources precisely in the areas already most exposed to drought.

If no action is taken, adds Maretti, food safety is at risk: "A detailed analysis must start from the extreme data in terms of temperature, fires, hailstorms and tornadoes that we record at a European level, based on models that project us up to 2100, in order to build a plan of infrastructural interventions capable of securing the production capacity of the agricultural sector". According to the president of Legacoop Agroalimentare, "no agricultural business alone can resist the immense change that awaits us". We need, he concludes, "strengthened cooperation" between Italian regions, European countries, and agricultural businesses and cooperatives.