Sicily's farmers are looking for innovative alternatives to traditional crops | Hacker News Reader

Sicily's farmers are looking for innovative alternatives to traditional crops

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52 pointsranit47 comments

This story does suggest the logical response to the climate change Chicken Littles who say we will no longer be able to grow crops. Sure we can, just different crops.

Then again, apocalyptic belief systems generally have little to do with either reasoning or positivity.

edit: Before you flame me, I fully believe in climate change - I'm not denying anything here. I'm just saying humans can and will adapt.

> I'm just saying humans can and will adapt.

The human race as a whole can and will adapt. Just as we have to particularly virulent strains of influenza. That doesn't mean it won't be a tragedy

Looking forward, I'll welcome European bananas and dates and cocoa, but what other crops will they replace?

Does that mean I can grow olives and oranges in Scotland without a greenhouse now?

On a south facing slope

Why not, Scotland already has the Inverewe Gardens [1], it's only going to get hotter (but maybe some harsher winters [2])

[1] https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/inverewe/highlights/gard...

[2] http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/...

The growing season is much shorter, maybe a cultivar that will flower early so the fruit have longer to grow and ripen. I've got two olive trees in London that are blooming right now and produce fruit, albeit small compared to southern European olives. They did turn dark last summer. Raw olives are very bitter - brining is key.

Frost might be an issue in Scotland - mine are in large pots

Adaptive, not innovative.

Adaptation is an innovation if few others are doing it.

Fair enough. But the bar is rather low when it comes to commercial farming.

Now a jump to permaculture principles (which also eschews monocultures) would be the kind of innovation that would lay longer before the next “innovation” was required.

And it should cost a few seconds to actually hold the like button to like. This avoids unnecessary likes.

Cool story, and definitely climate warming is real, but this doesn't scale. Hot weather is not new to the mediterranean, and neither are droughts. The mediterranean basin is blessed with being able to cultivate almost anything. It is certainly possible to cultivate tropical fruit and tropical animals are not strangers (lions used to live in greece). But there are at times harsh non-tropical winters and at times snow. These plants can't survive those that's why they were never grown en masse.

> These plants can't survive those that's why they were never grown en masse.

Now they can. That's the point of the article.

As an Italian who's been living at the equator for a while.. Would you bet a big part of your capital knowing that a snowstorm in January can wipe out 20 years worth of growing avocado or mango plants? As much as 2.7 degrees in average temperature rise, though dramatic, does not prevent the possibility of a month in a winter of rigid temperatures, where your whole avocados and mangos plantation freezes to death.

I read a short story by Chekhov which involved a Cherry Orchard (it may well have been The Cherry Orchard although that's a play, I think it was The Black Monk) in which a frost was forecast so they set smoke billowing making fires, I imagine to stave off the cold killing the fruit. I've not heard much about that, and I imagine the Russians are quite adept at coming up with genius solutions to get a crop to harvest.

It always struck me as an amazing image, the contrast of reading it whilst being banged around on a tube train making it all the more amazing.

Planting fire lanterns at night for example in the middle of vineyards, to prevent exceptional frost from damaging the harvest, is an ancient agricultural practice.

In Italy I think it was used last year. Here's an article with a gallery of pictures:

https://www.altoadige.it/foto/locale/la-notte-pi%C3%B9-fredd...

Niagara region uses small wind turbines to turnover the really cold air at ground level that gets « stuck » at crop level with warmer upper air.

Helicopters are a more expensive way of doing this.

Farmers also use helicopters to prevent frost from destroying fruit.

https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2016/08/23/flying-frost-control/

I would add (also as an Italian) that a not so uncommon crop (not only in Sicily) has been in recent (last 20 or so) years kiwis.

Don't ask me the reason why, but somehow they (the Italian ones) taste very unlike what a kiwi (in Oz or NZ) tastes, they are somehow less sweet and more sour.

Maybe it is a different species or the different kinds of ground or maybe they are harvested and brought to market at different stages, but I believe that somehow is the difference in climate (even if NZ and Italy are not so different).

AFAIK most people in EU (that hadn't the occasion to taste the "real" thing) get used to the taste, but when (if) they happen to go to NZ they suddenly realize that they had been eating something "different".

Many supermarkets import both, and even after that excessively long transport from NZ to EU you can easily tell the difference, both by look and by taste. Definitively different breed. I personally also prefer the NZ version.

While I don't have knowledge of Italy or Kiwi, here in my US state of Georgia this year our watermelon has been extremely good. Very sweet and big melons. Much better than any year in recent memory.

I was listening to some journalism on the subject and the farmers association promoting this produce claimed it was due to a very good growing season with no freezes or bad weather and that conditions remained ideal for basically the entire season, which almost never happens.

Perhaps the quality of flavor of the kiwi is just affected by the climate and soil.

Another example more relevant to Italy might be the D.O.P. canned marzano tomatoes, which have unique flavors due to the soil and climate they are grown in in Italy.

>Another example more relevant to Italy might be the D.O.P. canned marzano tomatoes, which have unique flavors due to the soil and climate they are grown in in Italy.

Yep, and you should taste them before they are being put inside the cans ...

> Perhaps the quality of flavor of the kiwi is just affected by the climate and soil.

That's almost certainly what is happening, unless they have some separate cultivar that was bred to better withstand the Italian climate where they are grown, which is also quite possible.

Berries are an easy one to compare this effect to in North America - you can often tell the difference between a good growing year and a bad one from strawberries, which prefer hot springs and early summers with little rain, and will taste differently if they get cold temperatures and a very wet spring.

Source: grew up in farm country, have picked single cultivar source berries for preserves/freezing/eating for many years.

It's the concept of "Terroir":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir

The same crops acquire very specific characteristics based on the geographical location they are planted.

I never tried salad tomatoes as sweet and flavorful as those I used to eat as a kid in Sicily...

San Marzano tomatoes, the exact name, are the most well known of the relatively few varieties that have the appropriate shape and size to be canned (as you are stuffing a fixed number of Whole tomatoes in a can, shape and size is very important) and they are really good for canning only in a limited part of the South, e.g. near Caserta.

>>I would add (also as an Italian) that a not so uncommon crop (not only in Sicily) has been in recent (last 20 or so) years kiwis.

I was given the option of purchasing those kiwis with cold hardy rootstock though. So I guess grafted ones with the right rootstock survive. Same with oranges, mandarins, and lemons. Those with some sort of Russian rootstock all survived, those with Sicilian and Pugliese rootstock didn't.

Yep, they survive just fine in Italy (I have no idea of what breed or rootstock they use), Italy has become the second producer in the world, on par or surpassing New Zealand and only second to China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QC

Still, they taste IMHO different.

You'd probably hedge with insurance and I would take an option on propane heaters and polyvinyl! Also plant cold hardy variants (if they exist).

The article mentions that they've been in the business of cultivating and exporting avocados since the 1960s:

"Continella's father started an avocado export enterprise in the 1960s, when such crops were pretty much unheard of in Sicily. Now, their tropical garden is the biggest on the island, and home to towering green 50-year-old avocado trees."

So yes, they could survive also before and they did.

It's a bit strange to claim that thanks to the climate change of the past 40 years you've been growing avocados for the past 50.

the rise in planted hectares comes from a rise in prices and ever more stringent production quotas on other produce from Europe.

There's an avocado craze since years, and EU agricultural regulations determine how convenient is to cultivate something. But hey, "climate change". So much more interesting.

Pet peeve of mine: "climate wars". Sometimes we (the West) have been arming and training rebel factions for years, or destabilised governments, or paid the corrupt ones to serve our interests. And if a war breaks out, hey, "it's climate change!"

While I don't disagree, climate change is relatively new, so to point to the Arab spring and the effect climate change potentially had on it is newsworthy, and deserves it's own treatment.

With all our meddling in the Middle East, I find it immoral to suggest that climate change might have a role in unrests and armed conflicts. It's a very easy scapegoat that absolves us from a tough questioning of our actions and purposes in the area. There are so many and so more obvious, or plausible, political factors entirely dependent from our will that to suggest it might be climate change's fault sounds like a bad joke.

The link as I understand it is climate change causing crop failures and push up the price of food. That sounds plausible.

No conflict has a single cause, just a bunch of factors. It isn't about scapegoating, if you don't understand the cause how can you fix it.

And it's not about morality either. Finding the causes of something is an amoral process. What you choose to do with that information can be informed by morality though.

> climate change causing crop failures and push up the price of food. That sounds plausible.

It has to be verified for each case. In the case of the Syrian civil conflict, many aren't convinced:

https://theconversation.com/is-syria-really-a-climate-war-we...

But more in general, climate might act as a multiplier of existing weaknesses. A drought or a crop failure (and other climate related disasters such as floods) is something a healthy country can withstand without much trouble. A poor country, with bad infrastructures and planning, is going to be affected much more. But it's an astoundingly silly idea that of improving the situation by fixing the droughts- but leaving those countries as vulnerable and politically unstable as ever- as opposed to helping countries to become more politically stable, wealthy, with better planning and infrastructure.

A few years ago a WHO report calculated in many hundreds of thousands the yearly victims of climate change. Digging in the report, it turned out that the number was calculated as such: diarrhoea statistically kills x% more people per year per each added degree in average temperatures- but only in very poor countries, where sanitation and public health systems are severely lacking. It follows that by fixing sanitation and health care in those countries, at a relatively modest expense, we could save many millions, climate change or not.

"It has to be verified for each case. In the case of the Syrian civil conflict, many aren't convinced"

Yeah fine, that's a debate to be had, it shouldn't be coloured by morality though.

"But more in general, climate might act as a multiplier"

That's a fair point. I think at some point they do have to take responsibility. I'm reminded of the rhyme 'for want of a nail' [1]. You can't ignore climate change any more than you can blame it all on the nail

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

> Yeah fine, that's a debate to be had, it shouldn't be coloured by morality though.

Do you think? In the case of Syria, for example, we're talking about 500 thousand deaths, millions displaced, a country in ruins. It's a disaster of gigantic proportions. And we made so many wrong choices before and during the conflict (first and foremost those of invading two neighbouring countries seeding chaos and fanaticism, then of siding against the regime at all costs, arming the rebels and prolonging the war) that could have made an enormous difference. But no, we wonder if it was the climate- the most indirect of all our possible responsibilities.

Sometimes I feel we're some sort of street hooligans à la Clockwork Orange beating up homeless people in the streets, and then seriously wondering if it's the fault of capitalism.

If the question is, what caused the Arab Spring? We can have a well reasoned debate with evidence and statistics and possibly say with some certainty whether or not climate change was a factor. There is no moral component in there. I don't like Hitler, I'm not going to blame him, unless the evidence leads there. I like puppies, if the evidence points to puppies then I'm not going to reject that just because I like puppies

If the question is, what should we do about the causes of the Arab Spring? That is a question with a moral component. We can disagree about whether addressing climate change should be a part of the solution, just like we can disagree whether we should be murdering all the puppies, we should really be on the same page about whether puppies are the problem before making that decision though.

You mention making wrong choices, starting with incorrect assumptions isnt going to help make the correct choices.

The article is not very clear, Passanisi is the "new guy", that started planting avocados in 2001, whilst Continella is his "mentor" (he is - unless there is an homonymy - an actual Professor at the University of Catania, seemingly specialized in cultivation of tropical or sub-tropical plants):

http://www.di3a.unict.it/docenti/alberto.continella

and this latter's father started the avocado business in the '60s.

Again, unless it is a case of homonymy, a relative (possibly the father) of the professor is (was) also a Professor at the University:

https://www.freshplaza.it/article/100112/Prospettive-per-i-f...

They are all from the same small area (Giarre, near Catania) which actually has a very warm micro-climate (long before any possible measurable effects of climate change) though I believe it is border-line in winter due to the effect of snow on the Etna, it seems like Mr. Passanisi, besides the actual cultivation, is dedicated to the "brand" siciliaavocado.

The article is about switching to these crops now that it is too warm for traditional crops and even easier to grow tropicals, not that it's been impossible before now to grow these crops.

eh, no, snow and occasional hailstorms have not stopped

>>Now they can. That's the point of the article.

Until a Siberian cold destroys them. Europe had one a few years ago, it ruined all such exotic fruit in Eastern Europe (at least). Now they are planting hardy crops because in 10-15 years odds of another cold front are almost 100%

> lions used to live in Greece

Lions didn’t disappear from Balkan Peninsula because of the harsh climate, people wiped out them.

I imagine the Romans wanted them for the Coliseum (or is it Colosseum? That's a whole rabbit hole I don't need to go down at the moment)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lions_in_Europe#His...

mostly hunted for sport well before the romans

For sport, before Rome existed? Not mostly hunted because they are direct competitors as apex predators? And because they threatened and killed children and livestock?

Greek myth is full of lions, they went extinct in historical times.

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