With the Po running dry due to the unseasonal heat and the absence of rainfall - events that led to a hydrometric level of the great river equal to that of last summer - farmers have started emergency irrigation throughout the north. Italy from Piedmont to Emilia-Romagna, from Veneto to Lombardy.
This is what Coldiretti complains according to which the flow of the Po fell for the first time this year below the threshold of one thousand cubic meters per second, with a -24% compared to the average for the period while the rivers of Emilia-Romagna, are "abundantly below the monthly average, from Enza, to Secchia, from Reno to Trebbia and the water shortage also affects Lake Como, which is only 20 centimeters away before reaching the all-time low with a filling of just the 8.8% against an average of 63.8% "For this reason, Coldiretti points out, to protect crops" in Emilia-Romagna emergency irrigations have started from Parma on the fields sown in Ferrara in the strawberry plants and nurseries, from Modena on tomato and melon seedlings to Ravenna on vegetables and greens, kiwis and vineyards up to Piacenza on onions, corn and wheat. In Veneto, emergency water has been used for fields already sown with barley and wheat and even for the meadows in particular
lare on the Pedemontana strip and the Alta Trevigiana but also the area of the Bassa Padovana along the Adige, in the area of Barbona, Vescovana, Granze and Stanghella.
Irrigation also in the area of Alessandria and Cuneo in Piedmont ".
In order to save "water, increase irrigation capacity and increase the availability of food for families - observes in a note the president of Coldiretti, Ettore Prandini - we have developed and proposed in time a concrete project that can be immediately set up, an intervention structural made necessary by climate change ".
In detail, the project, explains the association, "involves the construction of a network of small reservoirs with a low landscape impact and spread throughout the territory, favoring the completion and recovery of existing structures, projects already underway and to be launched with authorization procedures not complex, in order to quickly route the overall project and optimize the final results ".