'Very scary': European agriculture hit hard by climate change and drought
Source: 'Very scary': European agriculture hit hard by climate change and drought
Author: Melissa Rossi
In Northern Italy, there was little winter snow this year and even less springtime rain, and extreme summer temperatures have evaporated what little moisture remains. Just as rivers across Europe have all but dried up, the Po river, a major source of irrigation in the river’s fertile valley, is a trickle and the normally marshy rice paddies it irrigates are brown and cracked. "We have no water," Fabrizio Rizzotti, a seventh-generation rice farmer, told Yahoo News. "The plants are curling up and dying in the fields." This year, he expects his harvest of carnaroli rice, favored for risotto, to be 30% of what it was last year. "What's happening this year is very scary," enologist Ton Mata, third-generation owner and CEO of the Recaredo vineyard in Spain’s cava region, Alt Penedès, told Yahoo News. "We have little rain and a very long, dry, hot period with three heat waves. We are seeing that the grapes are very small and weigh less." Although the harvest is just beginning, he's sure that the yield will be down by 20% to 40%.