This year, for the first time in Italian history, there will be more foreign chestnuts in the Italian marketplace than home-grown ones.
The castagna, once a basic food for impoverished Italians and now the core of the sugary marron glace and other Italian desserts, appears to be facing a two-way threat from Asia.
In the past, the chestnut was the mainstay of diets in poorer communities, with production reaching 829,000 tonnes in 1911. A century later, the volume of domestic chestnut production has reached an all-time low: the Italian harvest, plunging by 70 percent since 2005, is down to 18,000 tonnes this year.
The decline has been based on the arrival of a wasp from China, Dryocosmus kuriphilus, which kills the chestnut trees by laying eggs in them. Meanwhile, inexpensive chestnuts from China and elsewhere flood the market.
Economic adviser to farmers group Coldiretti, Lorenzo Bazzana explained, ‘It means that, in 2013, chestnut imports will exceed domestic production for the first time … Imports are now arriving in Italy from China, Turkey, Spain and Portugal.
The large marrone variety has been making a comeback as a prized delicacy in puddings; these are also the ones sold roasted on street corners in winter. But as the Chinese wasp has spread across the country, production has dropped dramatically and prices have shot up, and vendors try to pass off the cheaper Chinese imports as ‘Italian.’
