THE “CRAZY” WEATHER HAS MADE FARMERS TURN TO THE METEREOLOGIST. LUCA MERCALLI TOLD WINENEWS: “FARMERS MUST PLAN THEIR FUTURE ON CROPS THAT LAST DECADES AND KEEP THEIR EYES OPEN ON ANNUAL ONES. AGRICULTURE IS BOTH VICTIM AND PERPETRATOR”

Climate changes are making agriculture and its crops crazy and now the weatherman has become the farmer’s trusted "counselor". “Farmers planning their activities”, the famous meteorologist and climatologist Luca Mercalli told WineNews, “ need to focus on crops in the long term, on plants fruit or forest trees, that have a vegetation life of decades. The planning of annual arable crops is simple; just keep your eyes open, follow what's going on in the global climate and landscape scenarios outlined by the climate, because there is always time to adapt. If things do not work one year, the year after one can change key factors and methodology”.
Climate changes, however, warned the president of the Italian Meteorological Society, and the use of fossil energy, have made agriculture “as much a victim as a perpetrator”.

“Until a few decades ago, agriculture was subjected to the weather’s whims”, Mercalli told WineNews “such as famine, drought, overly long rainy periods. In the last 50 years, climate change has become a key factor due to industrialized agriculture emissions. Whenever we use oil to operate a tractor, produce fertilizers, transport foodstuffs, or to produce packaging, we consume energy that is almost always fossil and produces emissions that alter the climate.
Therefore”, added the climatologist, “reducing our dependence on fossil agriculture helps to reduce the risk of climate change in the future”.
“However, we must be cautious”, he said, “because changes are already in the air, and we need to make choices that will resist”, trying to cope positively to traumatic events, and "key factors that can resist to change over the decades”. And, finally, the meteorologist advises farmers to have “great flexibility, elasticity, and stay informed of all the facts that climate science offers today for agriculture planning”.