A difficult year ends for agriculture in the Varese area, and not just for the Covid emergency. A crazy climate and the continuous invasions of wild animals have negatively marked 2020. “For the agriculture of Varese it has been a difficult year. Especially the fault of the Covid emergency, which for months has brought entire sectors such as horticulture and agritourism to their knees. But there is more: the effects of a crazy climate have battered the Varese area on several occasions, while large portions of the territory are still hostage to the invasions of wild boars and wild animals ".
The President of Coldiretti Varese Fernando Fiori highlights how pre-Alpine agriculture will remember 2020 as a year of extreme difficulty. "The difficulties related to lockdowns and limitations have been heavy and still are. Since the days of the first total spring closures there have been severe limitations for transport logistics. Agriculture had to reconvert in no time, for example with home delivery of agricultural products: we did it in March, as well as on the occasion of the second autumn wave".
All sectors are suffering, and not only those linked to agri-food: “One of the symbolic images remains the flowers destroyed in the nurseries in spring. Images that hurt, and that highlight the proportions of a crisis never seen before. But, as mentioned, all areas have been affected by it, remembers Fiori. Furthermore, in 2020, the phenomenon of wildlife has assumed unprecedented and worrying proportions: in the province of Varese, the devastation of wild boars and wild in the fields is daily, with a damage report that day by day takes on increasingly worrying dimensions: ungulates and wild animals devastate the fields in every corner of the pre-Alpine rural area and the enforcement operations, so far, have proved ineffective in solving the problem once and for all.
The wild boars, together with the other wild ones, put at risk a wide spectrum of crops, with damages that reach, even for individual cases, several thousand euros. The raids have caused damage to nurseries, orchards, open-field vegetables, small fruit plants, vineyards, legumes, as well as oil-bearing crops and, as seen, to meadows and grain maize and silage. Several times Coldiretti Varese has reiterated the need a ex-novo census on the territory, because the population of these animals is far greater than that already estimated by Ispra.