ENRICO MARTINO

Every five years in February (in 1217 it will be February 12, 19 and 23) the Alps of the Varaita Valley of Piedmont see an explosion of the near French Provence’s atmosphere, jackets, gaudy belts, improbable military uniforms softened with rosettes. It is the “Bahio”, one of the oldest alpine traditional festivals often mistakenly called Occitan Carnival. It’s story recalls the victory against the Saracens invaders that, more than thousand years ago, ravaged the southern Piedmont with raids from their bases on the French Riviera, but in reality it is a superposition of historical and ritual pre-Christian elements related to the cycle of death and rebirth of the seasons. A history lost in the mists of many centuries which children still learn by listening their grandparents, where in an increasingly challenged tradition even the female characters are played only by men. The “Bahio” overwhelms the Varaita Valley with the tune of violins, clarinets and accordions in a choral epic Occitan of complicated processions crossing the various villages to meet in the small capital of Sampeyre, where wrinkled gentlemen dressed as graceful Provencal girls dance traditional Occitan dances. The last day each “Bajio” judges the respective treasurer who attempted to run away with the money, so passionate processes that seem real but generally concluded by acquittal. Then costumes and swords go to sleep for another five years.

Italy cultivates about 50% of the rice produced in the European Union, and 94% of Italy's crops are grown in a large plain between Milan and Turin, Pianura Padana, equidistant from the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, where in the summer water melts from the Alps glaciers, covering the fields like an immense mirror. Unfortunately, due to climate change, Italian rice output in 2023 has been the lowest for 23 years. After a second year of drought that led 2022 to the "water war," some farmers reduced the rice fields, replacing them with more profitable crops. Rice is also one of the most water-intensive crops, with between 3,000 and 10,000 liters of water needed to obtain a kilogram of output, and must be constantly irrigated to keep the upcoming sprouts under water. Until the 1960s, about 50% of rice crops were activated in a nursery before planting in the fields. Today, the farmers plant directly in the field, introducing new technologies, drones measure the 'vigor' of each plant, and farmers apply the exact dose of fertilizer, a "precision agriculture" increasingly able to protect the environment and maximize the production, but it's a double-edged sword. Submersion lowers water use, but it boosts greenhouse gases. Even though flooding fields intermittently could help cut the release of methane, it also produces up to 45 times more nitrous oxide, another potent greenhouse gas, and Italy has yet to adopt a solution. The long history of the "rice triangle" of Northern Italy started after 1124, when Cistercian monks coming from France founded the Lucedio Abbey in Piedmont, in the heart of an extensive marsh. With their experience, they took advantage of the plain's inclined plane, introducing rice cultivation in the fifteenth century. In the mid-1800s, Piedmont's farmers grappled with water scarcity, prompting the Count of Cavour, a leading figure in the Italian unification but also minister of Agriculture for the Kingdom of Savoy, to establish Ovest Sesia pioneering association that unified over 3500 farmers to manage water resources, and create an irrigation system based on the construction of the remarkable Cavour Canal, which is still an enduring masterpiece of hydroelectric engineering today. Fast forward almost two centuries, this irrigation system remains essentially unchanged. Still, today's shifting climate and the alterations in cultivation methods force people to face a similar challenge. In the meantime, with the increasing loss of rich cultural traditions and the architectural heritage of rice mills and factories, some farmers transformed their old mills into rice museums. In some buildings of Tenuta Colombara near Livorno Ferraris, where the rice has been grown since the end of 1400, the old dormitory of the rice weeders, the Mondine made famous by some Italian neorealist films, every single object is placed where it was once, without any restorations, untouched to preserve the signs of time.