Northern Italy's Drought Continues to Worsen

An ongo­ing drought in north­ern Italy con­tin­ues to get worse and exac­er­bate the water scarcity issue fac­ing the region’s pop­u­la­tion cen­ters and agri­cul­ture.

In many areas of the Po Valley, rain has not fallen for more than 110 days, and the moun­tain water reserves have dried up quickly after an extremely dry win­ter lead­ing to a lack of snow­pack.

The com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors means the main river lev­els have fallen to a his­toric low. Local author­i­ties esti­mated that the Po River has dropped to its low­est lev­els in the last 70 years, with mas­sive con­se­quences on local agri­cul­ture.

The river is the back­bone of Italy’s north­ern agri­cul­tural regions, con­sid­ered the most sig­nif­i­cant in the whole coun­try for sta­ple food pro­duc­tion.

As the fresh­wa­ter lev­els in the Po River drop, more salt water from the Adriatic Sea enters the river, neg­a­tively impact­ing local plants and ani­mals reliant on the river. Similar phe­nom­ena are occur­ring in other rivers in the region too.

As sev­eral aquifers and wells dry up, large areas are expe­ri­enc­ing extreme water short­ages. Some res­i­dents of Piedmont and Lombardy may soon face night­time bans on water use rec­om­mended by the local util­ity.

Dozens of other loca­tions have water sup­plies deliv­ered from else­where, and in the Ferrara area of Emilia-Romagna, author­i­ties asked 250,000 peo­ple to use as lit­tle water as pos­si­ble.

The cur­rent drought has also been exac­er­bated by many days of high tem­per­a­tures, which are expected to rise fur­ther in the fol­low­ing weeks.

“The sit­u­a­tion is get­ting dra­mat­i­cally worse because we have low lev­els and no rain­fall, and to that, two more fac­tors must be added,” said Meuccio Berselli, the sec­re­tary-gen­eral of the Po Water Authority. ​“We have a tem­per­a­ture which is 2 ºC or 3 ºC higher than aver­age, in some areas even 4 ºC more. And that hap­pens in a sea­son with no snow­pack.”

With the excep­tion of Lake Garda, whose lev­els are still con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient, every other lake in the region has also seen its water lev­els drop to his­toric lows, which has led author­i­ties to limit the amount of water for irri­ga­tion. However, farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions have opposed this move.

As a result of water rationing, many farm­ers expect reduced crop yields this year. The farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti Bergamo, warned that a dras­tic drop in yields is expected in bar­ley, wheat, fod­der and corn. As tem­per­a­tures rise, the asso­ci­a­tion wrote, the sit­u­a­tion will become even more dif­fi­cult.

According to Coldiretti, 2022 has seen half the rain­fall of the aver­age of the last few years. To cope with the ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and farm­ing water needs, Coldiretti asked for the inter­ven­tion of the reser­voirs and lakes author­i­ties.

“The moment is com­plex and dif­fi­cult on sev­eral fronts, but you have to act imme­di­ately, putting into prac­tice every­thing you can,” said Alberto Brivio, Coldiretti Bergamo’s pres­i­dent. ​“We are liv­ing through one of the worst droughts ever. At this time, we need clar­ity and coor­di­nated action.”

According to Coldiretti, the bar­ley yields are already down by 30 per­cent, and many more crops are com­pro­mised as farm­ers strug­gle to access suf­fi­cient water to irri­gate.

“If there is no water, we can not guar­an­tee [locally-pro­duced] food to our cit­i­zens,” Brivio said, warn­ing that the war in Ukraine and result­ing global food price increases would also be exac­er­bated by the sit­u­a­tion.

Coldiretti esti­mated that the drought has already caused €1 bil­lion in dam­ages in the whole coun­try due to reduced yields. In addi­tion, half of the live­stock and more than 30 per­cent of Italian food pro­duc­tion is at risk, Coldiretti warned.

• Coldiretti Bergamo
• Ansa
• Corriere della Serra