Bitter Rice In Waterless Fields Better To Grow Soy

ROSASCO (Pavia) - Sitting on a mountain of 8,000 quintals of rice, Stefano Greppi thinks about the future "If it doesn't rain, the companies here go bankrupt", and he too, who has two hundred hectares and is also president of Coldiretti of Pavia, has fear.

Either it rains, or it rains But it's not raining.

Farmers and us consumers are condemned to change crops to eat rice at a high price because there will be less and less of it, and also of worse quality Does anyone care? It does not seem.

There is no water, and the rice feeds on it "Last season there was a 40 percent drop in production.

And next season, it depends on Lake Maggiore, which is as low as ever " The lake is poor, and going up the range, there is no snow on the mountains.

Downstream, a dry landscape, with streams or empty canals This is Lombardy, once happy, of intertwined rivers and lakes, water meadows and large canals.

Fertile, green Towards other crops Therefore, the contents of the company's large silo do not console Greppi (it is the rest of his 2022 harvest), worried about his death for his territory: Pavia, the first rice-growing province in Italy, 80 thousand cultivated hectares, 1500 companies.

Panorama of farmhouses and fields, which many still measure with poles Production: 4 million quintals, Carnaroli and Arborio in the Pavia area, Indica and "round" in Lomellina.

Monoculture for 40 years, since stables began to be eliminated But as then, many have already made the decision: no more rice, too much risk of seeing it dry out, it's no longer worth it.

Giovanni Comello, 105 hectares in Castelnovetto, Lomellina: "Already last year I began to sow soybeans, on 12/13 hectares After all, in 2022 it never rained here.

And like me, many are doing it, or are thinking about it" This is the precise moment, it will be sown soon, so you have to decide: continue with the rice, risking losing the seed too, or jump on other crops such as sorghum and soybeans, "which have lower production costs, and need to be watered twice a year, plus a few storms, which however never come again".

the field was submerged, and then the water inlet was closed, which remained there for days And every now and then something was added for maintenance".

The practice is now impossible: "The water table is so low that he immediately drinks all the water introduced" " but here it should rain 2 months in a row, and it won't happen", says Comello.

"We need the basins, but we have been asking for them for 10 years and no one has ever listened to us", says Greppi "And now it's too late", the years go by and it is always later.

There is already talk of irrigation shifts and "minimum vital flow", just enough to keep the territory alive, "but we will have to choose: either the crops, or the flora and fauna There won't be enough water for everything".

After all, the frogs have already disappeared, the few remaining have been eaten by the ibises, and in the future who knows what we will never see again, in a landscape that will never be the same, moreover The new varieties with modified DNA Gianluigi Tacchini, 50 years old, 80 hectares in Santa Cristina and Bissone, in the Pavia area.

"Last year I lost 65 percent of the harvest I take the water from the Muzza Consortium, which takes it from Lake Como.

But it was little, so I reduced the rice to 15 hectares" You walk on the dust, among the stubble that used to be fields that never produced anything, because the plants died of heat.

"I just let the corn die , with a certain magician And to think that these were once swamps.

My father made us rice which was called "da spade", because you had to raise it with that And the tractors got bogged down in the mud, the only thing was to use the horse and the sled".

Spring soils, and what's more, they received water from the north "as even now: when you irrigate in the Upper Milan area, after 20-30 days something of water arrives here, and then passes beyond", along the inclined plane that is the Po Valley, up to the mouth " And now, what to sow? I have not decided yet.

Not much rice" But converting fields is no joke, not everyone can do it.

Not those who have specific rice-growing machinery, for hundreds of thousands of euros And then there are the rules of the rural development plans of the Lombardy Region , the agri-environmental measures to be respected.

Greppi explains, "new varieties will arrive, such as Nbt (New breeding techniques, ed) which are not GMOs Their DNA has been modified to resist water stress".

They are experimenting with them, they haven't arrived here yet, and perhaps it is better not to And then there are the rules of the rural development plans of the Lombardy Region, the agri-environmental measures to be respected.

Greppi explains, "new varieties will arrive, such as the Nbt (New breeding techniques, ed) which are not GMOs Their DNA has been modified to resist water stress".

They're experimenting with them, they haven't arrived here yet, and maybe it's better not to And then there are the rules of the rural development plans of the Lombardy Region, the agri-environmental measures to be respected.

Greppi explains, "new varieties will arrive, such as the Nbt (New breeding techniques, ed) which are not GMOs Their DNA has been modified to resist water stress".

They're experimenting with them, they haven't arrived here yet, and maybe it's better not to .