Rain has continued to belt down in Italy over the past week, putting up to 70 per cent of towns and villages at risk of flooding and causing “incalculable” damage to horticultural crops, said agricultural association Coldiretti in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The trade body calculates that hundreds of hectares of field and greenhouse crops have been destroyed as well as much farming infrastructure such as plastic tunnels.
Damage in the Ligure area in the north-west extends to lettuce, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and spinach, with leaves and roots rotting in the fields.
The picture is similarly bleak in the Marche area where rain and mud have damaged nursery and protected crops and in the Campania region - particularly the area around Salerno - capsicum, aubergine, cauliflower and onions have also suffered huge losses.
On the island of Sardinia, rain fell in such volume that soils parched by the summer drought have been unable to absorb the water and flooding has resulted.
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