The increasingly unpredictable climate is once again making Italian agriculture apprehensive. This time, given the season, the alarm is all for late summer storms, with the related hailstorms which are already worrying Coldiretti in particular: the association has launched the alert for the countryside precisely due to the arrival of storms with hail, which is the most feared phenomenon due to the irreversible damage it causes to fruit and vegetable crops, in the fields where the harvest has already begun – and is still in full swing.
Coldiretti underlined that in the areas affected by the civil protection alert (orange in Puglia and Abruzzo, yellow in 11 regions, on the eastern side from north to south) fruit crops are particularly concentrated and fruit crops have been spread to protect anti-hail nets which, however, are not yet sufficiently widespreade.
September's rainfall arrives in a year - underlines Coldiretti - marked up to now already by 1.126 extreme weather events along the Peninsula amid hailstorms, tornadoes, water and wind storms and heat waves, with an increase of 56,4% over the previous year, according to the ESWD database.
"We are also facing the obvious consequences of climate change in Italy where the exceptional nature of atmospheric events is now the norm, with a tendency towards tropicalization which - concludes Coldiretti - manifests itself with a higher frequency of violent demonstrations, seasonal short and intense rainfall and the rapid transition from sunshine to bad weather, with significant temperature changes that they compromise crops in the fields with costs of over 14 billion euros in a decade, between losses of national agricultural production and damage to structures and infrastructures in the countryside”.
