agostino petroni

On a warm July evening in 2022, the residents of Varapodio, a small town in the southern Italian province of Calabria, came together for a celebration.A marching band played classical tunes in front of the church, which was adorned with hundreds of multi-coloured fairy lights. A priest stood solemnly holding a silver chalice of holy water as the mayor cheerfully shook hands with some of the guests – around 100 people of all ages, many of whom were dressed in their Sunday best.
The party had b...

From ancient olive groves to root vegetables, foreign pests introduced via the bloc’s open import system are causing damage worth billions – and outbreaks are on the rise
The plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome. Since scientists first discovered Xylella fastidiosa in 2013 in Puglia, Italy, it has killed a third of the region’s 60 million olive trees – which once produced almost half of Italy’s...

Agostino Petroni is a journalist, author, and a Pulitzer Center grantee based in Andria, Italy.
As my father and I drove through our family’s organic vineyard in southern Italy this past August, he turned his head away from the window in distress and asked me to keep driving. Like in many other Italian farms, our organic grapevines had been attacked by downy mildew, a fungal disease that dries up plants and fruits. The fungus has been present in Europe since 1878, and farmers have learned how...

Arrivano dal Bangladesh già indebitati. Dopo aver pagato un posto letto e i fiori da rivendere gli resta poco in tasca. Ma si ribellano raramente perché non pensano di essere sfruttati
Dopo una notte passata a vendere rose in Toscana, Mohammed (il nome è stato cambiato) fu colpito alla schiena con un bastone da qualcuno che passava di lì in auto mentre lui stava pedalando lungo una strada costiera. Cadde a terra. Era l’agosto del 2013 e Mohammed aveva ventidue anni. È convinto che fu un’aggre...

After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the West’s reaction was swift and decisive, with unanimous decisions by the European Union and the United States to support Ukraine and punish Russia with economic sanctions.
Two years on, the war continues while Russia’s economy remains resilient.
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He fell to the ground.

It was August 2013 and Mohammed was 22. He believes it was intentional and likely a racist attack.

“I was already broken,” he said. “But after that, I was in pieces.”

He suffered emotionally and still has back pain from the assault today.

He had arrived in Italy a few months earlier following a harrowing seven-month journey via land and sea. He had no documents or money and owed 9,000 euros ($9,700) to the Bangladeshi agents who had arranged his trip.

A sustainable technique for catching tuna that goes back thousands of years is on the verge of extinction in Italy – but not for a lack of fish
On an overcast morning, several miles off Sardinia’s east coast, four men jump into a net where 49 giant Atlantic bluefin tuna are fighting for their lives. For 30 minutes, the men struggle in a frenzy of nets, tails, fins and sleek silvery bodies before finally securing a metal hook through the gills of the nearest fish.
From one of seven wooden boat...

LARDERELLO, ITALYOn a chilly autumn morning in the Italian countryside near Larderello, Tuscany, the misty landscape reminded me why the area is nicknamed Valle del Diavolo, or the Devil’s Valley. Supposedly the inspiration for Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the land here is a web of natural cracks in the rock that let a mix of steam and gasses reach the surface. Volcanic vents called fumaroles and geysers sprayed white clouds into the air.

Unlike the rolling hills, vineyards, and cypress-lined roads of other parts of Tuscany, the landscape here is studded with dozens of gray cooling towers puffi

When planning a 2020 sailing trip in Greece, Bettina Trittmann knew she wanted a cruise that offered less of a carbon footprint than other cruise ships did.

The 57-year-old German mediator booked a week-long unconventional sailing tour around a few of Greece’s islands with Aegean Cargo Sailing, a social cooperative that blends sustainable cargo shipping with cultural tourism.

During summer, travelers can join Loucas Gourtsoyannis, the 77-year-old captain, on his deliveries around the Greek archipelago to meet producers and sample their wares: rare goat cheese, aromatic island honey, or fres

Dopo le scosse degli ultimi mesi gli scienziati cercano con attenzione ancora maggiore i segnali di una possibile eruzione vulcanica nella zona intorno a Napoli e Pozzuoli
Una coltre di vapore bianco offusca la sagoma di Alessandro Santi mentre si china su una pozza gorgogliante di liquido grigiastro, a Pozzuoli, un comune nell’area urbana di Napoli. Circondato dalla densa nube sulfurea, il tecnico, sulla trentina, immerge un palo lungo poco meno di due metri, sulla cui estremità è attaccato ...

curtain of white vapor blurred the outline of Alessandro Santi as he bent over the edge of a gray bubbling pond in Pozzuoli, a city in southern Italy. In the thick sulfurous cloud, the 30-year-old technician dipped a six-foot pole, the end of which was attached to a plastic cup, into the 180-degree Fahrenheit water and pulled back a sample. He turned around and carefully poured the water into a glass container.
Underneath his feet, one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes lay dormant. Whil...

KAWANDA, UgandaWilberforce Tushemereirwe holds up a genetically modified banana that took millions of dollars and 20 years to make. It contains so much provitamin A, a substance that transforms into vitamin A in the body, that its flesh has a distinctive orange tint.

This “super banana” was created at Uganda's National Agricultural Research Laboratories (NARL) for the noblest of causes: to save the lives of thousands of children who die in Uganda every year from vitamin A deficiency.

The citron of Calabria in southern Italy had almost died out from extreme weather and lack of economic value. But growing the crop under a canopy of solar panels has given the fruit a new lease of life – with lessons for many climate-stressed crops.
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On a warm late winter morning, Antonio Lancellotta, a 35-year-old farmer, shows me around one of his family's unorthodox 1.8-acre (7,280 square metre) greenhouse in Scalea, southern Italy. Rows of lush citron trees (Citrus medica), heavy with wh...

Puglia is a kaleidoscope of territories, ecosystems, and rhythms of life, hard for a single word to encompass. Some older Italians refer to the southern Italian region of Puglia as Le Puglie, meaning “many Puglia”, and while today there is no such thing as Le Puglie, when you visit you'll realize why people still call it that.
Puglia's 940km (584 miles) of coastline, which were once part of the Magna Graecia and harbored ancient Romans' mighty flotillas, outlines what is known as the "boot he...

A deadly and hard-to-detect disease has been ravaging the treasured olive trees of southern Italy for 10 years. A highly trained squad of super-sniffer dogs could save them.

On a sunny winter morning, the dog trainer Mario Fortebraccio slowly bends toward a line of potted olive trees and indicates it with his hand. Waiting for that signal, Paco, a three-year-old white Labrador, rushes through the row of plants with his head tilted, sniffing each pot at the root, the rhythm of his inhaling e...