Global warming is confusing our fruit.

last updated 8 January 2015

Italy

Antonio Cianciullo

“Climate change has already hit Italy,” said Antonio Cianciullo in Rome’s La Repubblica. The proof is right there on the farms. Grain farmers have long been complaining that each year brings less and less rain, but scientists simply shrugged. Droughts come and go, and they aren’t a good measure of global warming. Now, there’s evidence that can’t be ignored. “The fruits are migrating.” For centuries, hardy, hot-weather fruits such as lemons, oranges, and olives have grown only in southern Italy, while more delicate crops, such as apricots, thrived in the northern zones. Now we see citrus farms springing up all over northern Italy. And apricot production is all but gone. Last year, for the first time, Italy was forced to import apricots from Great Britain. Date palms, an invasive species, “have pushed as far as the foothills of the Alps.” This is an aspect of global warming we failed to predict. Local agricultural traditions, so dear to rural Italian life, “are in danger of being lost.”