Risotto crisis: the fight to save Italy’s beloved dish from extinction | Rice | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/risotto-crisis-the-fight-to-save-italys-beloved-dish-from-extinction-aoeIn 2022, the worst drought in 200 years hit the Po, Italy’s longest river. The waterway forms the lifeblood of a complex web of canals built between the Middle Ages and the 1800s, which serve as the paddy fields’ main source of irrigation. That year, Italy lost 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) of rice fields, according to Ente Nazionale Risi, the national rice authority, and rice production dropped by more than 30%. Last year, the drought persisted and the crop from another 7,500 hectares of rice fields was lost.
Today, rice farmers struggling to recover from the impact of the drought face an uncertain future. “The higher the temperatures, the more frequent and intense these extreme events will be,” says Marta Galvagno, a biometeorologist at the Environmental Protection Agency of Aosta Valley.
Over the past two years, Ferraris, like other farmers in the area, has tried to diversify his crops to reduce the risks brought by the climate crisis. He has reduced the acreage dedicated to paddies and started to grow crops such as maize, that require less water.
“The climate is changing and I am afraid there will be other droughts,” says Ferraris, whose farm lost about €150,000 [£129,000] in 2022. Rice remains his biggest crop, however. Recently, he has started monitoring snowfalls in the Alps and checking the water levels in Lake Maggiore every day. “It’s hard to sleep at night,” he says.
Ferraris is particularly worried about the production of carnaroli classico, a refined rice variety. Thanks to its ability to resist high cooking temperatures and absorb flavours, carnaroli is considered the “king of risotto”, but it is also extremely delicate and vulnerable to changes in the climate.