Extreme weather cost Italy's farms €3bn, survey finds

Extreme weather has cost Italy's agricultural sector an estimated €3 billion this year, according to reports, as the country's farmers contend with a summer of record heat, drought and violent storms.

The figure, reported by The Local Italy on Thursday, underscores the mounting toll on a sector already strained by disease and climate stress. The losses come as central and southern Italy brace for another late-summer heatwave, with temperatures approaching 42C in some areas, while the north faces thunderstorms.

For Puglia, the numbers carry particular weight. The region's olive groves, still recovering from years of Xylella infection, and its expanding vineyards are among the most exposed to the kind of extreme heat that has marked this summer across the Mediterranean.

The €3 billion estimate, cited by The Local Italy in its Thursday roundup, covers damage across the agricultural sector from a season of extremes that has reshaped the European summer. The same report noted that nine in ten Italian schools lack air conditioning, a separate symptom of a country struggling to adapt its infrastructure to rising temperatures.

The Guardian's survey of six European nations found that more people favour encouraging air conditioning over cutting emissions, a sign of how the heat is reshaping public priorities. That survey, published this week, comes after four extreme heat events that have pushed Italy's power grid and its outdoor workforce to the limit.

In Puglia, the connection between the national figure and the regional reality is direct. The region's olive oil industry, a cornerstone of the local economy, has been fighting Xylella for over a decade, and a summer of extreme heat compounds the stress on already weakened trees. The same applies to the region's vineyards, which supply both the local wine trade and a growing export market.

The late-summer heatwave forecast for the end of the week, with highs approaching 42C in the south, threatens to extend the damage just as harvest preparations begin. Farmers in the region have been adapting with shade nets and drought-resistant varieties, but the scale of the losses reported nationally suggests the sector is still vulnerable.

The agricultural losses feed into a broader picture of climate adaptation across Italy. As the Guardian's survey showed, Europeans are increasingly choosing practical measures like air conditioning over longer-term emissions cuts, a tension that will shape policy debates as parliament reopens in September.