“Desperate winemakers, broken vines and no possibility of treating them for days.” Phone calls and reports continue to be made to Confagricoltura Piacenza, which is trying to map the situation in the area while water bombs and hailstorms provide no respite, hitting the entire province at various times.
“The first phone call on Thursday morning was from Ercole Parizzi, president of the Colture Industriali product section – explains Confagricoltura Piacenza in a note -, who runs Agricola Saliceto with his son Dante whose lands are located between Alseno and Fiorenzuola ”.
“After several years in which we no longer saw these intense rains – reports Parizzi – this year from January to May, in Alseno, 580 millimeters of water fell: the quantity that in other years fell throughout the year. On May 15th alone, 118 millimeters fell in 12 hours, of which 55 were concentrated in two hours in the afternoon: a real bomb of water! I look at the fields and I don’t know how to reorganize the work: the wheat is laid down, the recently sown crops, such as sweet corn, have flooded fields, we’ll see if they need to be reseeded, if they will emerge or rot. Agrochemicals and soil improvers already distributed were washed away. Then, with all this water, days will have to pass before they can enter the field. We will go, where we can recover, to work at the end of May with operations that under normal conditions are carried out at the end of April”.
“First the drought, now the water bombs”
A year in contrast to the last five years, in which the water was sipped and pumped from wells, with all the problems related to energy costs and quantity monitoring. “Today – explains Parizzi – it becomes difficult for us to plan, also because the new CAP forces us to plan crops and rotations, but with a year like this all plans fall apart”.
“In addition to the damage – he concludes – we also have the insult of not being able to store all this excess water. In fact, only 11 percent of the water is retained, all the rest flows towards the sea, without being able to be either guarded or valorised with an adequate system of reservoirs and dams that can at least feed the crops when drought periods inevitably recur. ”.
In short, a really bad agricultural season for now. In the early afternoon of Thursday 16 May the photos of the violent hailstorm in Mottaziana arrived and then the phone call from Cristian Galvani, wine producer, who runs his own company in Trevozzo. “Here in Val Tidone it’s a disaster: rain and wind broke all the two-year-old vines that would have gone into production from next year – explains Galvani -. I have already contacted the offices to start the procedures relating to the damages, but this is no consolation. We also have a big problem: as soon as the sun comes out and temperatures rise, the injured plants will develop phytopathologies and we won’t be able to treat them because the soil is soaked and we can’t enter with tractors.”
Vineyards destroyed
Several winemakers in the area are in contact with each other and alarmed messages are circulating. “We are all scared crazy – they say – because these conditions will wipe out our vineyards, if we don’t manage to treat we are dead. We make an appeal to ensure that the exceptional conditions of this year are evaluated and that exceptional treatments are made possible.”
Confagricoltura Piacenza it makes the cry of alarm of its producers its own and will act in the competent bodies to ensure that this legitimate request is implemented. Unfortunately – the association points out – this campaign, characterized negatively, seems to have spared no crops and the greater the added value, the greater the damage. A battered vineyard, like the ones we received photos of, requires years and investments to recover.
