‘We can’t let the animals die’: drought leaves Sicilian farmers facing uncertain future
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The desert is encroaching across Sicily, the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean, where a European temperature high of 48.8C was recorded in 2021. Rainfall is down by more than 40% since 2003. In the last six months of 2023, just 150mm of rain fell.
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“By 2030, a third of the territory of Sicily will become a desert, comparable to the lands of Tunisia and Libya,” Mulder said. “The entire strip facing the Sicilian Channel [waters separating Sicily from Africa] is doomed to desertification. The ancient Arabs who once inhabited the island had successfully devised ways to manage water. However, these old aqueducts have not been maintained or updated. Sicily is now facing the concrete consequences of decades of mismanagement of water resources.”
Traditionally, drinking water in the island is sourced from aquifers, subterranean rock layers saturated with water, while water for agriculture is stored in large tanks constructed after the second world war. Both systems rely on increasingly scarce winter rainfall.
For three decades, essential maintenance to the irrigation network has been neglected, diminishing the capacity of the island’s reservoirs.
“Once we had artificial ponds that so that the livestock could drink during grazing,” Cammarata said. “But due to drought and high temperatures, all the small artificial ponds have dried up.”
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