Drought in Northern Italy: Rice Crop Update

The following is an update on the serious Drought Conditions in Northern Italy from our Rice Flour Producer, warning of Availability and Cost issues ahead. Everyone is suffering!

Here in Northern Italy it’s really very hot, from 35°C to 40°C, there’s no water in the rivers, no snow in the mountains, so the lack of water is a real problem, also for agriculture.

Corn is growing as the harvest is at the beginning of September, but a part is of course damaged and burned due to the drought. Regarding rice, some area close to Novara and the land of Lomellina have really few water, in Vercelli area the situation it’s better. Anyway everyone is expecting less quantity of rice this year. Prices are still very high, corn and rice increase continuously, most of all rice. Farmers are not selling the remaining raw rice as they want to earn more money so they’ll wait till the end of August, beginning of September to offer some product in the market at very high prices. Rice mills are consequently working less , and there’s few broken rice in the market, so also this one is expensive to purchase and rice flour prices remain high.

I think that for new crops prices will remain high, as it’s really a difficult period and it’s hard to work in this way. Moreover energy costs are crazy and we have to use a lot of power to run the mills 24 hours a day. So also production costs are very high.