For more than 30 years the Morettino family had been trying to produce their own coffee on a small piece of land in Sicily. And for 30 years they had failed. But last spring 66 seedlings produced about 30kg of coffee, in a development that could turn the Italian island into the northernmost coffee plantation in the world. Experts say the climate emergency is irremediably tropicalising the Mediterranean agriculture of Sicily, where in August a monitoring station in south-eastern city of Syracuse took a temperature of 48.8C , the highest ever recorded in Europe. But for Andrea Morettino, whose family has been in the coffee business for a century, it is the realisation of a dream. “In the 90s, after many trips across the world, my father decided to try planting some coffee plants in our small garden on the outskirts of Palermo, on land 350 metres above sea level. Usually, coffee plantations grow around 1,500 metres above sea level,” Morettino said. “At the beginning it was a simple experiment but after hundreds of attempts we began to notice the coffee beans were growing in number, up until last spring when an abundant harvest allowed us to process, dry […]
Sicilian coffee dream a step closer as climate crisis upends farming
