Risotto crisis: the fight to save Italy’s beloved dish from extinction

After drought devastated prized arborio and carnaroli harvests in the Po valley, new rice varieties offer a glimmer of hope. But none are yet suitable for use in the traditional recipe

• Photographs by Marco Massa and Haakon Sand

For most of winter and spring in 2022, Luigi Ferraris, a 58-year-old rice farmer from Mortara, a town in the Po valley, remained hopeful. Rainfall had been down 40% in the first six months of the year, and snow had accumulated thinly in the Alps, prompting an 88% drop in the amount of water coming to the Po River from snow-melt; flow in the river and its connected canals was at a historic low.

But Ferraris believed things would soon return to normal. “I thought the lack of water would be temporary,” he says.

The River Po with rice fields stretching across the valley