by For most of the winter and spring of 2022, Luigi Ferraris, a 58-year-old rice farmer from Mortara, a town in the Po valley, remained hopeful. Rainfall was 40% in the first six months of the year, and the snow was thinly accumulated in the Alps, which caused an 88% drop in the amount of water that came to the Po from snow-melt; the flow in the river and the canals connected to it was at a historic low.
But Ferraris believed that things would soon return to normal. “I thought the lack of water would be temporary,” he says.
Historically, access to water has never been an obstacle in this lowland. It is in the heart of the Po valley, or Pianura Padana, a floodplain in northern Italy that originally contained large land swamps and a southern bed of malaria. For centuries, local farmers fought to push the water back, building drainage and leveling land to slowly transform the wetlands into crop fields and greens.
“In this area, the problem has always been to keep the water away,” says Alberto Lasagna, director of Confagricoltura Pavia, the local branch of the General Confederation of Italian Agriculture. “It was never the other way around.”
Ferraris did not realize the full extent of what he was about to lose until the end of May 2022, when his rice fields had not turned their normal green. “They were all brown,” he says. “It all looked like dry straw.”
In his 37 years running the rice farm he inherited from his grandfather, Ferraris had never seen anything like it. He lost more than half of his harvest and he was not alone.
Italy is the largest producer of rice in Europe, growing around 50% of the rice produced in the EU. Most of its rice fields are in the Po valley, which stretches across much of the north of the country. Unique varieties of risotto rice, such as carnaroli and arborio, are grown in these areas.
In 2022, the Po, Italy’s longest river, experienced its worst drought in 200 years. The waterway forms a complex network of canals built between the Middle Ages and the 1800s, which act as the main source of irrigation for the paddy fields. That year, Italy lost 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) of rice fields, according to Ente Nazionale Risi, the national rice authority, and rice production fell by more than 30%. Last year, the drought continued and the crop was lost from another 7,500 hectares of rice fields.
Today, rice farmers struggling to recover from the impact of the drought face an uncertain future. “The higher the temperature, the more frequent and more intense these extreme events will be,” says Marta Galvagno, a biometeorologist at the Glen Aosta Environmental Protection Agency.
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Every month, Marta climbs a 2,200 meter tower on the Italian side of the Matterhorn to collect data from instruments such as the eddy covariance sensor, left, which is used to assess the impact of the climate crisis.
In the last two years, Ferraris, like other farmers in the area, have tried to diversify their crops to reduce the risks associated with the climate crisis. He reduced the acreage dedicated to paddy and began growing crops such as maize, which require less water.
“The climate is changing and I’m afraid there will be another drought,” says Ferraris, whose farm lost around €150,000 [£129,000] in 2022. However, rice is still the biggest crop. Recently, he started monitoring snowfall in the Alps and checking the water levels in Lake Maggiore every day. “It’s hard to sleep at night,” he says.
Ferraris is particularly concerned with the production of carnaroli classico, a refined rice variety. Thanks to its ability to withstand high cooking temperatures and absorb flavors, the carnaroli is considered the “king of risotto”, but it is extremely delicate and vulnerable to changes in climate.
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Antonio uses a system of flood gates and the natural terrain to adjust the water levels; gauge measures the levels in the Cavour canal in Chivasso, near Turin. The canal, since 1852, helps to feed the water of the Po
Last year, after the daffodil and whitening process, only 38% of the carnaroli classico Ferraris harvest was salable. “Because of the drought, rice [grains] often split,” he says.
Giovanni Pochettino, a farmer in the Unesco-recognized Collina Po natural reserve, less than a kilometer from the river bank, also grows carnároli and shares Ferraris’ concerns.
“We have more and more challenges in producing carnarole rice, suffering from the heat of August,” says Pochettino. “These types of rice were developed almost 100 years ago, when the temperatures were completely different.”
Pochettino is considering giving up carnarole production, whose quality is compared to fine wine. “The margins are low,” he says, adding that the rice mills that buy his crop want perfect grains. “The financial return does not reflect all the hard work required to grow this type of rice.”
Filip Haxhari, a researcher at Ente Nazionale Risi, says that due to the long drought, the production of carnároli decreased by 50% in 2022, threatening a unique variety of rice. “Only carnároli and other similar varieties have a type of genetic trait that allows them to absorb flavor, aroma and condiments and create a traditional risotto,” he says. “It is different from all other types of rice in the world.”
Francesco Avanzi, a hydrologist at the research foundation of the International Center for Environmental Monitoring (Cima), explains that the Po 2022 drought was mainly caused by high temperatures and low snowfall in the Alps. Almost two thirds of all the water that flows into the Po during the year from melting Alpine snow.
“The snow usually melts very slowly between April and June and that allows it to penetrate the ground very efficiently,” says Avanzi. Snow melt is particularly important in the summer, refilling the river when rainfall is low.
“Thanks to this slow release of snow water, rice farmers know that river flows will be consistently high between May and July,” says Avanzi.
In 2022, snow water resources in the Alps fell by around 60% from the median of the previous decade. “The winter of 2021-2022 was the worst but 2023 was similar,” says Avanzi. According to the latest data from Cima, in February snow water resources decreased by 63%. “It doesn’t look very rosy,” says Avanzi.
In recent years, an increasing number of rice farmers in northern Italy have adopted “dry planting” of rice, a technique that uses less irrigation water and labor, but also, counterintuitively, results in drier soil. , according to some experts. “The water that was used to flood the rice fields didn’t go,” says Lasagna. “It came through the soil and went back to the river.”
Haxhari and his team are working to develop new varieties of rice that require less water and are more resistant to changes in climate. “The drought in 2022 was heartbreaking, I have never seen so many plants die so much,” says Haxhari, a researcher for over 40 years. “But it provided a vital opportunity for research.”
The events gave scientists the opportunity to experiment new prometheusa new drought resistant rice variety now on the market.
Nuovo prometeo is not suitable for cooking risotto, however, and while Haxhari says his team aims to develop new varieties that will do justice to the traditional dish, Ferraris is still skeptical that small rice producers will produce similar rice, which focuses on a quality product. take advantage of these new types. “If we want to get the clients, we have to focus on high quality products,” he says.
Water consumption also remains a concern. In 2022, Ferraris rice farm experienced a 90% water reduction. “We’re talking about rice,” says Ferraris. “You still need water to grow it.”
Infrastructural failures likely contributed to the recent drought. Research by Italy’s national statistics bureau Istat found that due to structural leaks, the country’s aqueducts lost 42% of the water they carried in 2020. Climate and agricultural experts say that new systems to store water, and steps to optimize the existing supply network, critical to mitigating the effects of future droughts.
“If we implement mitigation and adaptation strategies, we can still avoid a disaster,” says Galvagno. “As scientists, we really have everything to say. What is lacking now is the economic investment and political will to implement these strategies.”
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