Sicily’s warming climate pushes farmers to swap vineyards for exotic fruit
Since ancient Roman times, it has been known for its wine, wheat and olive oil, but now Sicily is turning to a rather different crop – bananas.
Chiquita, one of the world’s biggest producers, has announced that this month it will plant 20,000 banana trees on the island, with the fruit expected to arrive on supermarket shelves as early as next year.
It is the fruit company’s first foray into Italy.
The pivot away from traditional Sicilian crops such as lemons, oranges, olives and grapes is being enabled by climate change.
Farmers are looking to adapt due to climate change by growing bananas and other fruits such as mangoes - Gaetano_Piccione
Scientists say that much of the Mediterranean is becoming more tropical, enduring extreme rainstorms and rising sea temperatures.
However, it is not just bananas that the country is starting to grow. Sicily is establishing a reputation for producing mangoes, kiwis, avocados and even papayas.
“We want to consolidate our links with Italian consumers, bringing the cultivation of bananas for the first time to the heart of the Mediterranean,” said Costabile Romano, the commercial director of Chiquita in Italy.
Sicily has already become one of the world’s biggest producers of kiwi fruit and is adopting other tropical fruits.
“It is a trend that has been going on for a few years now,” Lorenzo Bazzana, director of the fruit and vegetable sector for Coldiretti, a national agricultural consortium, told the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.
But the switch away from more traditional crops requires research and patience.
“You can’t plant everything everywhere. You have to check whether the soil is suitable, whether the amount of rainfall and the humidity levels are suitable and investigate whether pests of native plants can also attack imported ones,” he said.
‘Converted vineyards’
Francesco Mastrandrea, the co-founder of a company which grows avocados in Sicily, said: “We have converted vineyards, olive groves and arable land that were no longer producing, due to the climate, to avocados.”
Sicily is on the front line of global warming. In August 2021, the town of Floridia baked in 48.8C, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
That surpassed the previous European record, set by Athens in 1977 when it hit 48C.
Edible snails, which are cultivated in the area, shrivelled to death, dogs were banned from being walked in the hottest hours of the day, and citrus groves were hard hit.
‘Consequences of climate change’
Climatologists say large parts of the Mediterranean, including southern Italy, are undergoing a process of tropicalisation, marked by extreme heatwaves followed by violent thunderstorms and heavy rain.
Coldiretti, the agricultural organisation, has warned that “we are clearly confronting the consequences of climate change, where exceptional atmospheric events are now the norm in Italy, with a tendency towards tropicalisation”.
The environmental organisation WWF says that the Mediterranean is warming 20 per cent faster than the rest of the planet.
Rising sea temperatures have resulted in almost 1,000 invasive marine species, including more than 120 types of fish, migrating to the Mediterranean from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal.