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\n A boat is moored in shallow water near the Gerola Bridge as low water levels expose a vast gravel bank in the Po River amid a severe drought on Aug. 6.
\n | REUTERS\n <\/p>\n
Each spring, snowmelt is channeled to Europe\u2019s largest rice-growing region, flooding fields near Milan for planting varieties used in risotto and working its way east. The river and its tributaries also support nearly 900 hydropower plants, helping to drive the country\u2019s manufacturing economy.<\/p>\n
The Po River district accounts for about 41% of Italy\u2019s gross domestic product and 32% of its agricultural production, according to the basin authority.<\/p>\n
Climate change is testing the economy near Ferrara, where much of the farmland was created by draining delta marshes and lagoons. From the 1950s, the vast Mezzano wetlands were converted into farmland for crops from strawberries to tomatoes, maize and sugar-beets, much of it below sea level.<\/p>\n
Pumps and canals are used to continually manage the boundary between land and water, draining fresh water when there\u2019s too much and bringing it back when there\u2019s too little.<\/p>\n
Increasingly, the water arrives at the wrong time, said Stefano Calderoni, chairman of the Consorzio di Bonifica Pianura di Ferrara, which operates roughly 4,200 kilometers of canals and 160 pumping facilities.<\/p>\n
At peak spring flows, he estimates that roughly 10 billion cubic meters can pass Pontelagoscuro near Ferrara in less than two weeks. Months later, the same region can be scrambling for water. The Po increasingly seems like a torrent, continually filling and emptying, he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n Farmer Massimo Salvagnin (right) and his nephew Simone Gatto, an agronomist, on Aug. 6. The Po River\u2019s violent swings between flood and drought forcing farmers such as Salvagnin to rethink what they grow. \u201cWe have two great challenges: managing too much water and too little water,\u201d Calderoni said. \u201cWe relied on nature when we should have relied on planning.\u201d<\/p>\n Even rainfall increasingly offers only temporary relief. Intense, localized storms do little to rebuild water reserves, according to Alessandro Delpiano, chairman of the basin authority. Higher temperatures melt Alpine snow earlier, while urbanization and soil sealing diminish groundwater replenishment.<\/p>\n Know-how from the south<\/p>\n Salvagnin is hardly a farmer who resisted modernization.<\/p>\n His father founded Porto Felloni farm about 50 years ago. After traveling to the U.S. in the 1990s to study how American farmers used technology, Salvagnin introduced precision agriculture at the family business, including yield mapping and variable-rate farming.<\/p>\n Today, buried sensors measure soil moisture, while weather stations, satellite data and crop models estimate how much water plants are consuming. Irrigation can be adjusted by individual sections of a field.<\/p>\n Some of the techniques were developed in Italy\u2019s hotter, drier south.<\/p>\n Nicola Gherardi, a national executive board member of Confagricoltura, one of Italy\u2019s main farming associations, learned about drip irrigation for tomatoes from farmers in the Puglian area of Foggia. The systems water directly around the plants, unlike the large sprinklers common in the Po Valley.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | BLOOMBERG\n <\/p>\n