The unexpected fruits

This article is published in number 4 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until January 26, 2021

In Bongiolatti, born in ’53, he remembers the winters of the past in Valtellina: the temperature that reached minus 20, the ground freezing for 80 centimeters. Partly like this year’s, which we now treat as an exception, because so cold and snowy it’s really unusual. «Today the climate here is really changing and becoming Mediterranean, year after year». For the ancient principle that if life (and the climate) give you lemons, you have to make lemonade, Nello planted the most Mediterranean of crops at the foot of the Rhaetian Alps: the olive tree.

His company traditionally produces wine, Chiavennasca vine on two terraced hectares, but for some years now, 200 olive trees have also grown on his land.

The next project is to open an oil mill. Quick change of shot, we go down much further south: Giarre, in the province of Catania, on the slopes of Etna: in the lemon lands that he inherited from his family, Andrea Passanisi today grows fruits suitable for the tropicalization of our climate: avocado, mango, passion fruit. It sells directly on the web, its fruits are Instagram stars, with 32,000 followers for Sicilia Avocado. «Ethical spending starts with asking questions, ethical agriculture means having the answers. Direct messages are a perfect channel to take this step together with consumers ”, explains Andrea, with the enthusiasm of someone who has found his way after his studies in Law. «The first mission of agriculture is to follow the vocation of the territory». If that vocation changes, so do the crops: olives at the foot of the Alps, avocados in Sicily.

Those of Nello and Andrea are two of the many stories of adaptation of Italian agriculture to the changing context. 2020 was the hottest year ever, on a par with 2016. In the ranking of the six hottest years in history, the last six are in first place. “Agriculture is the economic activity most exposed to climate change”, explains in no uncertain terms Rolando Manfredini, Coldiretti’s food and production safety manager. “Our factors of production are land and water, and everything is regulated by temperature,” a way of saying that there is no more direct impact of global warming than on food. The numbers are worrying, we must state them even if they are scary, because climate action starts from this urgency. The agricultural sector in Italy has suffered damages of 14 billion euros in ten years, in 2020 there were on average 3.7 extreme events a day, sudden rains, hail, frosts, drought, soil erosion. Impact works in two ways. One: food changes the climate, as food is responsible for a quarter of global emissions. Two: the climate affects food, how much, how and where we can produce it. It is a way of saying that more sustainable agriculture saves the world and also saves food, which are two ways to save ourselves.

One of the keys to our climate adaptation is innovation: big data, satellite images, digital and drones. As Federico Caniato, professor at the Politecnico di Milano explains, “in agriculture, technology allows us to return to traditional principles of land care, bringing them on a scale suited to the needs of the present: energy savings, fight against waste, park use of water, reduction of intensive tools such as pesticides and fertilizers ». The best way to understand how important technology can be in the road to sustainability is to talk about water. Once in Italy it was not a problem, we are the country of 7,644 rivers and 300 lakes, a lush and fertile land. The drought came as a first and foremost cultural shock: in 2017 for the first time in living memory the sources of the Po went dry, the municipality of Rome and Lake Bracciano went into conflict, because on the one hand there is it was to quench the thirst of the Romans, on the other hand to protect the lake. These are not isolated episodes, it is the future. The flow of water bodies in Italy could decrease by 40% over our lifetime according to data from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on climate change. Saving water has become a matter of survival. This is where precision agriculture comes into play, i.e. the application of data and sensors to cultivation. “Today with a smartphone you can remotely monitor the vegetative state and know in advance when plants go into water stress, digital technology becomes a decision support system and allows farms to save water and energy”, explains Massimo Iannetta , Head of Biotechnology and Agroindustry of Enea.

Managing the reduction in water availability is a decisive issue. One of the most active study centers for researching practical applications in this field is the Bruno Kessler Foundation of Trento. Raffaele Giaffreda is an expert on the Internet of things, the technology that makes homes and cities smart and that can have the same effect on cultivated fields. The tech solutions to consume less water in agriculture have been studied in a project called Sapience, which was created precisely to engineer traditional knowledge. «The main water sensor in agriculture is always the human finger, you put it on and you can see if the soil is damp enough». With the Sapience project, a device was developed that does the finger job, but in a more exact and efficient way: an artificial root with a ceramic tube, remotely connected to a server. This tensiometer communicates with an app installed on the farmer’s smartphone, which alerts him if the plants are in water stress. The two Sapience trials, on the Roveré della Luna vineyards in Trentino and in the Budrio fields in Emilia-Romagna, have given sensational results: the smart root allows water savings of up to 70%. The idea of ​​the foundation is to develop a system that also allows for the remuneration of water savings: for every liter of unused water there is a compensation, which repays the farm from the technological investment. To pay would be the “competitors” for the use of this increasingly scarce resource, such as aqueducts or hydroelectric plants. It would be a way to make the whole system virtuous and collaborative.

The idea is ambitious, but there are many research centers and startups that are developing similar solutions. At the moment one of the great obstacles is paradoxically also the main quality of our agriculture, its being traditional and made up of a dense network of small farms. 90% of the 740,000 Italian agricultural enterprises have fewer than ten employees, they are small family farms with a high average age, the most difficult for large-scale innovation. But it is also a world of inestimable wealth, which must be helped in its transition to innovation. And to do this we need young people. The sustainable future of agriculture also passes through here: the generational change. “There
ecological and digital transition depends on the involvement of the youngest, it is they who have developed the green conscience and the technological propensity needed to change », confirms Iannetta di Enea. Smart agriculture, apps, sensors and precision tools can make Italian crops more suitable for the changing climate, but we also need a generation of entrepreneurs who are able to manage them. The good news is that, on this front too, something is moving. According to Coldiretti, agricultural businesses under 35 have grown by 14% in the last five years, one in ten of the new businesses opened by young people is linked to food production and above all – culturally and therefore very interesting – eight out of ten Italians today would be happy if their children worked in agriculture.
During urbanization and industrialization there was a stigma linked to working in the fields, also for this reason today only 3% of Italians are employed in the sector, but finally this is no longer the case.

Finally, there is what we who eat food can do, because there is no sustainable agriculture without sustainable consumption. The basic rules are known: preferably organic products, in season and with a short supply chain (in this, Sicilian avocados are certainly better than Chilean ones, for example), less meat and less waste, since every Italian throws 27.5 kg of food per year. If waste were a nation, it would be the world’s fourth largest polluter. But there is also another discourse, further upstream: with the decline of peasant civilization in Italy a separation has been created, a rift between the few who produce food in Italy and all those who consume it every day. “Healing that rift is the first step towards sustainability,” explains Iannetta di Enea. The points of contact are many: local markets, farmer’s expenses, beehives, solidarity buying groups. After all, it’s the same work that Andrea Passanisi does on his Instagram page on avocados, answering questions to reduce the distance. We need to shorten the logistics chain, and do the same with the knowledge chain. Manfredini di Coldiretti says: «Ours is a differential agriculture, with over 5,000 regional products. To survive, made in Italy must be supported by Italians. To support it, they must understand its value. To understand its value, they need to know its history, methods, and the people behind it. We have the potential to have the greenest agriculture in Europe, saving it is a job that must be done all together“. The first act of sustainable consumption you can do is be curious, ask questions, know what you are putting on the table, the difficulties it has faced and its value.

Photo: Massimo Paolone, Paolo Mariani, Alessandro Castagna

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