Drought in Sicily Threatens Grain Fields and Livestock
A crushing drought in Sicily has withered fields of grain, deprived livestock of pasture land, and fanned a spate of wildfires, causing damage already estimated at 2.7 billion euros ($2.92 billion) this year.
In an attempt to mitigate the effects of the water crisis, the Italian government in early May declared a state of emergency for the southern island, unblocking funds to purchase water tanker trucks, drill wells, and renovate pumping and desalination stations.
But the ensuing months of continued high temperatures have done nothing to ameliorate the already dire conditions. Farmers are giving up on their harvests and now wonder how they’ll feed and water their animals.
“There’s no hope, because it hasn’t rained since May of last year,” said Salvatore Michele Amico, a farmer near the town of San Cataldo in Sicily’s dry interior. “All the planted fields have been lost; there is no wheat, no barley, no oats.”
The land in these parts, deprived of vegetation, is bare and cracked. Rivers, ponds, and watering holes are dried up, and farming equipment sits idle on formerly productive land as cows wander in search of a blade of grass.
Once the breadbasket of ancient Rome, Sicily is expected this year to see its wheat harvest collapse by more than 50 percent, according to agricultural lobby Coldiretti.
“It didn’t rain this year, so we haven’t harvested anything, and we can’t feed or water the animals,” noted another nearby farmer, Beppe Palmieri, whose land formerly supported cattle and goats as well as fields of grain and feed.
While efforts are being made to bring in feed from the outside, the water situation is “critical,” Palmieri said. “There is no water for the animals to drink; we don’t know what to do. We have issues with accessibility; certain types of tankers can’t come up and provide water to the animals.”
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
