The Italian farmers saving an ancient fruit with solar power | Hacker News Reader

The Italian farmers saving an ancient fruit with solar power

bbc.com

153 pointsThevet55 comments

The South of Italy stands to gain a lot from solar power. There is a generational chance to restore the fortunes of an impoverished region, leveraging cheap and plentiful renewable energy like this guy is doing.

Unfortunately it's an area mostly controlled by gangs without a presence of the police or the government.

Maybe if there is interest from politicians and business people to make money there, those hanging issues could be fixed.

I would love to move and live there if it wasn't for those issues, it's so fucking gorgeous and cheap.

> it's an area mostly controlled by gangs

That's an exaggeration. Yes, there are significant issues with organized crime, but not everywhere.

> Unfortunately it's an area mostly controlled by gangs without a presence of the police or the government.

Just FYI, godfather wasn't a documentary. It was a film based on a book written by some american writer.

I wouldn't go as far as OP but criminal gangs are not fiction. See 'Ndrangheta for example.

> It is capable of heavily influencing local and national politics and infiltrating large sectors of the legal economy. In 2013 they purportedly made €53 billion, according to a study from Demoskopika Research Institute. A US diplomat estimated that the organization's drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering activities accounted for at least three percent of Italy's GDP in 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ndrangheta

Yes crime exists. From there to say that it's a completely lawless state it's a big leap.

I think you overstate the gang/organized crime problem, and in any case, skimming from public/large private contracts is the bread and butter of groups like this.

There are some cities that are well known mafia hotspots on Sicily but that is about it. It's a non-issue on Sardinia or the mainland.

Eh, there are serious issues on the mainland too - although not as "totalitarian" as some comments suggest.

They get stolen like crazy.

There is no prosperity without rule of law.

There is no rule of law when people are poor.

Thats not true. Take Afghanistan, it's hardly lawless. If anything poor peoples are the societies most intolerant towards crime.

You can be dirt poor and still be a moral person.

I don't think it's immoral to steal if you need to.

The Cidro is an interesting species for sure. Like a thorny and really big lemon (4Kg) that is basically all pith, no juice in the inside. Is either like that or shaped like Culthu's face. The most strange Citrus fruit by a mile.

Also one of the "original four" wild citrus if I remember correctly so it has huge historical and genetic value.

Important in Jewish culture as aromatic object, and surprisingly relevant also in food industry (most "candied lemon" found in baked pies is this thing really).

Too tender for most areas but I wouldn't mind to have it as long as there was a good guarantee of having a clean strain without viruses.

There's a few trees along a road near here that has fruits similar to this. Every fall / winter there are gigantic fruit that litter the ground to the point that it looks like it's covered in a lumpy chartreuse carpet and they continue to fall from the trees for the next month, taking about 3-4 months for the fruit to rot and lose the color.

Probably the same. I didn't knew about the lumpy carpet effect. Sounds like a funny sight.

If looks like a big lemon [1] and nobody is harvesting it, maybe is an old abandoned orchard. In that case you may want to pick one and try it as indoor air freshener [2].

[1] Not to confuse with Maclura or a Grapefruit.

[2] Assure that is not chemically treated first and if in doubt discard it.

Not an abandoned orchard. These are trees that were planted as part of a small park project in the front of a gigantic parking lot for an aviation technology company. The trees haven't been touched in years and nobody is attempting to harvest any of the fruit. They're basically just there to hide the buildings from the road.

Maclura or Poncirus seem more probable then.

The Cthulhu reference is funny because the common Asian name for this fruit is Buddha’s Hand.

Do you mean pith or pitch? Pitch would seem to make things inedible to people (like pine resin) but fruit pith is used in cooking.

You are right. Fixed. Thanks.

Now that's what I call... a pithy response.

I love these experiemts. In Bavaria, one of the hop farmers is trying a similar approach in large scale. Smaller tests have shown a similar outcome like in Italy, with the hop beeing protected from excess sunlight as well as hail and other weather.

Their biggest issue currently seems to be the grid. It is (still) not designed for decentral usage and while the smaller test areas didn't have any problems, it seems like they will run into problems during peak production. But that is "just" an infrastructure problem that could be solved.

I really like this dual use of land, with one complementing the other, because, as highlighted in the article, it gives farmers an additional income stream and enables them to run otherwise costly experiments with different crop. Love it.

On the grid issues: it seems like battery storage is either massive or individual. What doesn't seem to be happening is battery storage at the substation level. It would take planning but substation batteries could run low during the night and be re-charged by solar panels during the day.

In the event of a major power line being damaged, there would still be power for some amount of time coming from the substations.

Somebody I talked with last night was vehement about how irresponsible moving to EVs is, that the grid simply isn't up to it in her opinion. It's hard to get new power lines approved but distributing energy storage seems like it would help.

EV’s don’t actually need much power and adoption is going to be really slow. 15k miles per year at 4miles per kWh is only ~430 or so watts per car on average.

Considering the average car lasts around 25 years even 100% of new cars becoming EV would spread the transition over 25 years.

I thought it was no big deal since most citrus are cultivars but Citron is one base fruits the cultivars come from. There's much more to it than this video but it's certainly interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fFHWdCcQ_c

"Citron" is how bunch of languages (including mine) refers to lemon. This was pretty confusing article until I figured that out.

This is cool. I've seen a bunch of farms with solar panels on their barn roofs (which makes sense, they can be a pretty large area) but never over crops.

Solar panels over car parks are pretty great as well.

It is tricky - on one hand, it seems pretty nice to cover places like car parks or some crops with roofs of solar panels. You get to use the space twice and you get some shade.

On the other hand, the panels are pretty heavy and need to be cleaned every so often. You need a lot of steel to make sturdy framework to put the panels on, unless you want them to fall on someone or break in strong wind. And cleaning the panels that are high up is more difficult than cleaning panels that are ground level.

So depending on cost of labor and cost of steel and whatever (and I don't have numbers, I'm just musing) you might be better of putting solar panels on separate empty field.

As for cleaning, if this becomes widespread someone will surely make solar panel roombas.

They already exist, example:

https://hycleaner.eu/en/produkte/hycleaner-solarrobot/

though they cannot "jump" from one line of panel to the other, so they are suitable only on continuous surfaces.

I've never cleaned my solar pannels in the 3 years I've had them and I still haven't noticed any loss of production. Raining once in the while seems to clean them good enough

Funny, “citron” is lemon in Swedish.

And indeed in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of Hispanic languages). English is showing its weirdness again.

Is it in any Romance language other than French? It's limone in Italian, limon in Spanish, lămâi in Romanian, and those are the four main families of romance languages.

It's indeed curious that English adopted the Romance name for lemon and French adopted the Germanic name.

In Italian these specific fruits are not "limoni" they are "cedri", but in latin there is citrus (as the name of the plant/tree) and citreum (as the name of the fruit) that means lemon so it is not strange that the French has citron that seems not Germanic at all.

It is not clear at all whether what the Romans had were limoni, cedri or lime/limette, or all of them and whether they were only imported or actually cultivated locally.

The lemon/limone etc. come from Arabic/Eastern languages and has evidently been "imported" in most romance languages.

The scientific name of the lemon, "Citrus limon" settles it:

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

Which Romance languages other than French? I can't find any.

Looks to me as if most languages will have some variation of citrus/citron in use as a broader classification for the genus of citrus fruits, but that variations over lemon/limon/limone inherited via Arabic and Persian seems to be more common for the specific plant/fruit C. limon/lemon.

> Which Romance languages other than French? I can't find any.

There are several, including the second language with most native speakers in the planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...

There’s a drink in Italy made with this that’s way better than sprite.

You mean cedrata?

Though there are many makers of similar soft drinks, traditionally (since 1956) the most reknown maker is Tassoni.

The company has been recently sold (2021) and the buyer, Lunelli group (more famous for wines) has promised (but seemingly hasn't done anything about it till now) a new international expansion.

It is recent news that they are re-positioning the brand toward luxury beverages, JFYI (Italian):

https://www.repubblica.it/il-gusto/2023/03/24/news/cedrata_t...

Yeah, it’s Cedrata

Are you referring to Chinotto? I love that stuff. I wish I could get the less sweet versions, but I always buy a few cases of Brio anytime I go home to Toronto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinotto_(drink)

Chinotto is made with a different kind of fruit, still a citrus, but a different kind.

The cedrata is made with Citrus Medica or Citrus Diamante. This is basically a larger and sweeter (less acid) lemon.

The chinotto is made with Citrus Mirtyfolia. This is basically a small, bitter orange.

Chinotto is stupid expensive in the US right now. Lurisia, Galvanina, San Pellegrino-little italian delis want $14 for a 4-pack of 170ml bottles.

If this keeps up, I'm going to become an italian soda smuggler.

Wholesale price for San Pellegrino large bottles was around a dollar each a couple years ago when I was ordering them in SoCal

I first thought you made a mistake, but I googled and see the I was wrong. Where can you find chinotto in Ontario?

San Pelegrino makes it. Higher-end grocers have it sometimes; Italian import stores are more reliable. Speaking in general; we have it in BC but there are a lot of Italian diaspora here.

I buy Brio at Longo's market when I am there.

Brio (never tasted it personally) is said to be quite unlike chinotto (too much sweet), personally even the San Pellegrino made one is a bit too sweet, in Italy there are quite a few almost artisanal brands that are usually much better (in the sense of being more similar to "traditional" chinotto) but they tend to be marketed nowadays as "niche/luxury" and have hefty prices.

What you can do (at home) is to make it yourself, there are good chinotto syrups and you just add sparkling water to make a chinotto that is better than the pre-made soft-drinks.

That's a pretty low bar. Maybe if it's better than 7-Up...

In Italy what is similar to Sprite or 7-up (but usually better) is called gazzosa (or gassosa).

I wish I knew more about what percent of the sun was being blocked, percent coverage by panels etc. I’m not familiar with those panels, they seem partially transparent?

It's not clear to me what they are using here, but bifacial panels are typically more transparent, and can be used as partial shade for things like deck covering and pergolas

https://news.energysage.com/bifacial-solar-panels-what-you-n...

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