Mario Apicella staggers down a steep flight of stone steps on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, sweat dripping off his nose. On the 66-year-old’s back is a huge plastic crate, packed to the brim with freshly picked, bright yellow Amalfi lemons.
The effort of hauling these 125lbs (57kg) loads from the high terraces to a small fleet of pick-up trucks is a key element of a farming practice that has sculpted the area's unique landscape.
Over the centuries, thousands of lemon trees were planted on terraces carved into the mountainsides that plunge down to the cobalt blue waters of the Mediterranean.
The men who harvest them are nicknamed “contadini volanti” – “flying farmers” – because of the vertiginous slopes that they must clamber up and down.
But the landscape – feted by the likes of DH Lawrence, John Steinbeck and Gore Vidal – is now under threat, with competition from cheaper, less aromatic lemons from abroad driving prices down and forcing Amalfi’s farmers to abandon terraces that their families have cultivated for generations.
The abandonment of the terraces leads in turn to the collapse of dry stone walls and a dramatic increase in the risk of landslides and erosion – which can be fatal along a coastline where villages sit in narrow, V-shaped valleys where mud and water are funneled to devastating effect.
A group of Italy’s foremost geologists convened on the Amalfi Coast last month to warn of the extreme perils that the region faces as a result of the decline of lemon cultivation.
They said that successive governments had done “virtually nothing” to prevent landslides and erosion, despite the fact that such risks were higher in Italy than in any other European country because of its topography.
The geologists gave alarming assessments of the risk of landslides along the 30-mile stretch of coastline: 88 per cent for the village of Amalfi, the former maritime trading republic which lends its name to the whole coast, 77 per cent for nearby Minori and 88 per cent for neighbouring Maiori.
“You see that pink house up there on the hillside? All those terraces around it have been abandoned,” said Salvatore Aceto, who represents the sixth generation of his family to grow lemons on the terraces that overlook the picturesque village of Amalfi.
“That could easily cause a disaster. The dry-stone walls will collapse if they are not maintained. Then you have a big problem.”
The custodians of this World Heritage-listed landscape, which attracts hordes of tourists every summer, are slowly dying out. The number of lemon farmers has dwindled to around 320, and their average age is 60.
They are not being replaced by their sons and grandsons, who regard the work as too tough and too poorly paid. The slopes are too steep for roads to be built, and even mules struggle to access most of the handkerchief-sized terraces on which the lemon trees grow.
The men labour from 7am until late afternoon, sometimes doing 20 or 30 runs up and down the mountain. They are paid €6 for each crate they deliver.
“It’s really hard physically,” said Mr Apicella, wiping away the sweat during a brief break between carting crates.
“Young people prefer to work in tourism, as waiters or cooks. It's a much easier life.”
After 30 years of harvesting lemons, he is ready for retirement next year. “I used to enjoy it, it kept me fit and strong, but now I do it because I have no other choice.”
Roman Lebedovskyy, 41, is one of two Ukrainians in the group. He moved to Italy a decade ago. “This terrace is at the easier end of the scale. Other terraces are much higher and we have to climb many more steps. In July and August, when it’s really hot, we have to drink 10 litres of water a day.”
The risk of mudslides, already heightened by the abandonment of the lemon terraces, has been made worse by changing weather patterns.
“We're experiencing much more intense, more violent storms where a large amount of rain falls all at once,” said Andrea Reale, the mayor of Minori, one of the dozen villages that are scattered along the Amalfi Coast.
He wants to install ground sensors and remote-controlled cameras in the hills that loom over Minori to monitor the risk of mud slides and to provide an early warning system for the 800 families who live in the village.
“If it works well here, then it could be a test case. It could be applied to the rest of the Amalfi Coast and to other areas of Italy that are at risk from erosion, like the Cinque Terre in Liguria,” he said from his office overlooking a cobbled piazza.
“We’re trying to get politicians and policy-makers to understand that the Amalfi Coast is the Amalfi Coast because of this unique landscape. The dry-stone walls were built stone by stone by our ancestors. But the lack of maintenance presents a real risk.”
Amalfi lemons – known in Italian as “sfusati” - are big, knobbly and prized for their strong perfume and sweet flesh.
Mr Aceto, whose family has produced them since the 17th century, takes one and cuts it with a knife, popping a slice – rind included – into his mouth.
“You can eat the whole thing, the skin is so sweet,” he said, sheltering from the sun beneath the chestnut pole trellises that protect the trees from wind and rain.
“In our culture, we use lemons for everything. We use it as medicine, dabbing it on cuts. We use it as a spray against mosquitoes, we cook lemon zest with spaghetti. Our lemons are among the best in the world.”
But he said it was becoming "impossible to compete" with the cheaper, imported varieties.
“Just to cover costs we need to sell at three euros a kilo but instead we get €1 or €1.20. It’s for this reason that farmers are abandoning the land,” said Mr Aceto, ducking beneath branches weighed down with ripe, aromatic lemons.
The only way for the farmers to survive economically is to diversify – to open up bed and breakfasts in abandoned barns, offer tours of their land to the millions of tourists who flock to the Amalfi Coast, and to produce “limoncello” – the sweet liqueur made from lemon rind, pure alcohol, sugar and water.
Around 80 per cent of farmers sell their lemons to Carlo de Riso, who runs the local packing plant, situated beside a stream in the village of Minori.
He is the third generation to run the family business, which was founded in 1927.
In a small but bustling warehouse, lemons are packaged amid the noise of sorting machines and fork-lift trucks.
He sells his lemons for around €1.30 a kilo and ships them around Italy and abroad, to Britain, Germany and Scandinavia.
“This is heroic labour. The guys go up and down stone steps all day long, the harvest is all done by hand. They’re out under the sun and under the rain. It’s exactly as it was 100 years ago.”
Mr Aceto worked as an accountant for years before his father, now 81, persuaded him to return to the land and join the family business. That was three years ago.
“As an accountant, I was wealthy. I wore Armani suits, I had a gold watch. But I wasn’t happy. I sat in front of a computer all day. Then I changed my life. When I came here I was overweight but I lost 18kg in six months. I was reborn.”
“My dream is to keep it going for the next generation, and the one after that,” said Mr Aceto. “But this is not normal farming. It’s vertical farming.”