IN DISTANCE, The cathedral of Orvieto stands majestically on the massive outcrop on which the city stretches. Nearby, at the edge of the Alfina plateau, stands a castle surrounded by fields – part of the landscape, between Orvieto and Lake Bolsena, in which Alice Rohrwacher, an Italian director, shot her award-winning film “The Wonders” . After a long absence, Ms. Rohrwacher returned to find him transformed. “Fields, hedges and trees [had vanished] to make way for the hazelnut plantations as far as the eye can see, ”she wrote to the regional governors of Umbria and neighboring Lazio.
Around the castle, 200 hectares are reserved for the intensive cultivation of hazelnuts, explains Vittorio Fagioli, local ecologist. This is largely intended to satisfy the global appetite for Nutella, the nut and sweet chocolate nugget that helped transform producer Ferrero into a multinational with sales of more than 10 billion euros (11 billion) last year. Under an agreement signed with a local agricultural consortium, 700 hectares will be transferred by 2023 to the cultivation of hazelnuts. It is part of a revival plan for the Italian zone devoted to hazelnuts from 70,000 to 90,000 hectares, by extending it for the first time to Umbria and other regions.
On the Alfina stage, however, the company’s strategy met with vigorous opposition. According to Mr. Fagioli, each tree will need 30 liters of water per day, pesticides to deter insects and fertilizers to increase yields. Activists fear that all of these chemicals will flow into Lake Bolsena, as it receives most of its water from the plateau. They look with apprehension at Lake Vico in Lazio, surrounded for decades by hazelnut plantations, where in 2009 an accumulation of chemicals produced carcinogenic algae which required the installation of an expensive treatment plant. Ferrero disagrees, saying that growing hazelnuts around Lake Bolsena is “marginal” and that crops such as olives, grapes and apples need more chemicals. Nuts for you, in short.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the title “The Nuts of Anger”
