Last year, one liter of water in five disappeared with a drop in water availability of 18% which weighs on crops and stables, where there is a lack of fodder and water for animals in an early 2024 that has been classified as the hottest ever , with a temperature 1.84 degrees higher than the historical average, even in Puglia where the areas at risk of desertification represent 57% of the usable surface and the bill paid by agriculture subject to climate change and drought is high.
This is the alarm launched by Coldiretti based on Ispra and Cnr data. The situation in Puglia is critical, with artesian wells dry as well as farmers’ pockets forced to face rising prices while fruit trees, vegetable gardens and stables are suffering and lack fodder including that for banded hay, wet hay. useful for horses.
And a drop of between 20% and 30% is estimated for wheat, with the most difficult situation recorded in the province of Foggia. A problem for the entire national production considering that Puglia traditionally represents the granary of Italy. According to the Coldiretti analysis, the lack of rain led to a loss of water for the reservoirs amounting to 118 million cubic meters of water. “Puglia has the sad national record of being the region of Italy where it rains the least but when it rains the water is not collected due to the lack of reservoirs. With drought and rising sea levels, the rising salt wedge makes water resources and land unusable with a scenario that is more than worrying for the agricultural economy of the entire region. Due to the spring climate that characterized autumn and winter with temperatures well above normal, the clementines have already paid the price and ended up being pulped, compromised by the lack of water which inhibited their growth, with production costs also skyrocketing for emergency irrigation, so reports and checks have begun for the recognition of the drought calamity for the citrus fruit sector, but now cereals and legumes are at high risk of drought, while the olive trees are in perennial vegetation. The water crisis has led to a drastic drop in green fodder in the pastures with the increase in costs for the purchase of feed to ensure the feeding of the animals in the stables, which have already skyrocketed due to the rise in the prices of the main raw materials such as soya, corn, cereals and fodder also due to the current crisis due to the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, with farmers forced to bear the costs of feed”.
A dramatic situation in the face of which Coldiretti relaunches the proposal for a reservoir plan with pumping, a project that can immediately be built for a network of storage basins. The lakes would be built without cement, with local stone and with the same excavated earth with which they were prepared, to collect rain and use it in case of need.
“The objective is to double the collection of rainwater, guaranteeing its availability for civil uses, for agricultural production and to generate clean hydroelectric energy, also contributing to the regulation of excess rainfall and preventing the risk of flooding. Fundamental in this perspective is the recovery of the reservoirs already present in the area through maintenance work. But faced with the increasingly disruptive effects of climate change, it is also necessary to develop agriculture 4.0 solutions, from precision tools to artificial intelligence which only allow a reduction in irrigation water consumption estimated between 30% and 40%”.
