The Morettino family has been trying to grow their coffee for more than 30 years on a small Sicilian piece of land. They had been failing for over 30 years.
Last spring, 66 coffee seedlings yielded about 30kg of coffee. This could make the Italian island the northernmost coffee plantation.
Experts believe that the climate emergency is rapidly tropicalizing the Mediterranean agriculture of Sicily. In August, a monitoring station located in Syracuse, south-eastern Italy, recorded a temperature of 48.8C. This was the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe. Andrea Morettino is a coffee entrepreneur whose family has been in the business for over 100 years. It's the realization of a long-held dream.
After many travels around the globe, my father decided in the 90s to plant coffee plants in his small garden located 350m above the sea level. Moretino stated that coffee plantations usually grow at 1,500 metres above the sea level.
It was an easy experiment at first, but we noticed that the coffee beans began to grow in numbers after many attempts. We were able to harvest enough to roast them last spring, and then process them.
He added, "Do you know what's even more amazing?" The plants were grown in the open without pesticides or greenhouses. It is 100% organic. It could be a new beginning for us.
Andrea and Arturo Morettino, with their coffee plants in Sicily. Photograph: Morettino
The cultivation of Made in Italy coffee is a passion in the country of cappuccino and espresso. Palermos botanical gardens, an institute of research for the University of Palermo in the early 1900s, was home to a group of agronomists who tried to cultivate coffee. The winter of 1912 saw the dream crushed when the extremely low temperatures caused by the year's cold spell led to the death of the plants.
It is evident that the climate emergency, and subsequent rise in temperatures, played a crucial role in the flowering coffee plants in Sicily. Adriano Cafiso has spent 15 years traveling around South America and Africa, and is now working with Morettino.
The heat is not the problem in Sicily for coffee cultivation. We are currently working on several greenhouse plantations. This is so that the plants' so-called granddaughters or daughters will be able adapt to Sicilian climates to the point where they can thrive outdoors. This has happened before in the Palermo plantation.
Although the project may not be able to reach large-scale production in the near future, Morettino is determined that there will be new coffee plantations created on the island.
He stated that our dream is to produce a coffee with a radius of 0km and have coffee produced within continental Europe for the first-ever time. Climate change has forced Sicily to shift towards other crops in recent years. This is a challenge for entrepreneurs.
For centuries, Sicily was a major producer of lemons and oranges. It was first imported by Arab conquerors in early ninth century. However, citrus fruit production has declined dramatically in recent years. Land used for oranges has fallen by 31% over the past 15 years and for lemons by nearly half the time. This is because of increasingly hot and dry seasons that make it difficult for plants to absorb enough water.
Before the mercury reached 48.8C in august, the signs of change were already evident: In the summer 2020, there was no rain for 90 consecutive day. The average temperature increase on the island in the past 50 years was almost 2C according to data from the Balkans Observatory and Caucasus Observatory. This is compared with 3.4C in Messina, on the north-east coastline.
Scientists believe that the climate crisis could wipe out traditional agricultural crops in the Mediterranean and force growers to look for tropical options. The production of papaya, avocados, and mangos has increased by more than 50% in Sicily in the past three years. Researchers at Palermos have also seen the first blooming of welwitschia in Palermos, which is a native to the southern African Namib desert.
Christian Mulder, professor of ecology at the University of Catania, stated that there is an imminent danger of desertification. Many historic vines are likely to disappear. The worst-case scenario for the future is that Sicily's entire southwest will become climatically identical to Tunisia. Farmers are being forced to adapt to new crop varieties. This is already happening. We must do everything possible to avoid the worst.
