Orangenomics

The legendary "Fanta Tree"

This morning we relocated from Ispica, in southern Sicily, to a small agriturismo (rural tourist house) on the slopes of Mount Etna. There’s no wifi, no hot water (which is ironic, because we’re literally on a volcano, you’d think there would be some geothermic lava-heat or something), and the cold water smells sulfurous, but there is laundry, which totally makes up for all of those flaws. Our travels yesterday took us on a bike ride in a Sicilian nature reserve, where I promptly turned back upon seeing the size of the hill we were about to go down. I’m sure someone else will mention the fantastic experience of coming back up!

The next stop on our northward trek was a small citrus farm down some twisty side roads – we had to abandon Francesco’s bus and ride in the back of some hatchbacks up some dirt “roads” to get to the farm. It was worth it though, because those blood oranges were literally the tastiest piece of fruit I have ever experienced. Everyone else seemed to agree, including the pigs nearby, who ate the defective oranges from the production line. They even knew how to peel them with their noses and get to the fruit inside.

Andre, one of the farm managers and our tour guide, led us on an informative tour around the farm. Their farm is divided into two plots, upper and lower, and grows oranges, mandarins, tangerines, lemons and grapefruit from October-May, along with carob in the summer. Their products are certified organic, and they use a fairly unique marketing structure of only selling directly to the consumer, without any interlocutors taking a cut, because this middleman would make the entire farm operation unprofitable, which shows just how marginally profitable this farm is in the first place. Alessio, our guide, has purchased citrus from this farm for a long time, which is how he knew about this specific farm and got us in.

Hearing about citrus growing was really helpful in illuminating the content of the article that Casey and I have been reading lately, “Parametric Estimation of Technical and Scale Efficiencies in Italian Citrus Farming.” The article discusses the relatively small scale of citrus farms in Sicily as their main weakness. The combination of their small size (averaging less than 5 hectares) and non-specialization of crops (most farms grow many varieties of fruit) contribute to highly inefficient operations. During discussion, the group concluded that the strong history of Sicilian independence – which, curiously, is also a contributing factor to the prevalence of the mafia – also prevents farms from cooperating in ways such as collectively hiring a harvesting crew, purchasing agricultural supplies in bulk, or shipping their products together. To contrast, the total area of the farm that we visited is 27 hectares, which Andre thinks is a fairly appropriate size. Andre also spoke a lot about how they can’t ship to the U.S. because of protective tariffs meant to benefit California and Florida oranges.

Back from the farm, we’ve packed up and are getting ready to head out, to Paris, and then to home…