For tens of thousands of people, Matteo Fiocco is not just a farmer. On social media he is Matt The Farmer, one of the most followed Italian creators when it comes to vegetable gardens, vineyards, sustainability and life in the fields. Bresciano, born in 1988, graduated in Religious Sciences at the Catholic University of Brescia, for years he taught religion before radically changing his life and transforming a passion into a daily job made of land, seasons and harvests. In 2015 he purchased an abandoned farm in Cellatica, in the Brescia area, starting to build what has now become a real home farm based on regenerative agriculture. Video after video, he talked about sowing, harvesting, mistakes, successes and outdoor farming, gaining a huge community on YouTube and Instagram. But in recent days his profile has become the bitter diary of a losing battle against the extreme climatic phenomena that have recently been affecting the Po Valley.
The first hailstorm and the video that went viral
The first violent wave hit the Brescia area on 11 May. In many areas of the province, between Franciacorta, Palazzolo and Cellatica, enormous hailstones fell, described by many residents as similar to golf or even tennis balls. Whitewashed roads, broken trees and devastated crops in just a few minutes. In his video published on social media, Fiocco showed the consequences directly from his garden:
I lost everything. I had never seen a hailstorm like this before and it lasted fifteen minutes. Now I can’t help but roll up my sleeves.
Then, passing in front of the destroyed crops, he recounted the damage suffered:
I had spinach, salad, beets, spring onions and now everything is broken and unsellable.
The images show leaves with holes, broken vegetables and plants completely destroyed by the ice. Within minutes, what was supposed to be collected and sold became unusable.
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The second wave and the damage to the Franciacorta vineyards
Matt, and with him many other farmers, did not lose heart and replanted all the lost crops, thanking them on social media for the much love he received. Unfortunately, however, after the first storm a new disturbance hit the Brescia area again. Rain, wind, plummeting temperatures and another hailstorm hit Franciacorta in particular, one of the most important wine-growing areas in Italy. And so, without even having time to lick his wounds, Matt The Farmer returned to social media with another video in which, dejectedly, he announced yet another devastating hailstorm in a few days. This time it was not the newly “revamped” vegetable gardens that were hit, but the vineyards, already put in difficulty by weeks of atmospheric instability. Matteo didn’t even want to go and look at what might be left, dejected by a situation that affects many local farms like his.
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Extreme phenomena and the growing burden on agriculture
His posts that have gone viral well tell the reality of those who work with the land and who completely depend on the weather to sustain themselves. Many farmers have had to deal with destroyed crops and riddled fields and unfortunately the hailstorms that have hit Northern Italy in recent days are no longer isolated episodes and are limited to the summer period. More and more often, atmospheric phenomena become sudden, violent and concentrated in a few minutes, with devastating effects on crops. Huge beans, gusts of wind and extreme temperature changes are bringing farms that work on already fragile margins to their knees. Those who manage to protect themselves with anti-hail nets and prevention systems limit the damage, but many small producers do not have sufficient tools to deal with events of this intensity. And so, while millions of people watch videos of devastated fields online, behind those images there remains a very concrete reality: weeks of work canceled in a quarter of an hour of ice. All our solidarity with the affected farmers, from the smallest to the largest, with the hope that you can get back on your feet soon.
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