A blazing sun shining on the arid hills of San Cataldo in Sicily signals only despair for local goat breeder Luca Cammarata as he tries to find something for his herd to eat among the barren vegetation.

"The grazing land is zero," Cammarata told Reuters, looking sadly at his 'Girgentana' goats, a local breed that he and his colleagues have sought to protect and nurture but is now threatened with extinction.

A water shortage is hitting central areas of Sicily such as San Cataldo, in the province of Caltanissetta, very hard, and reservoirs are running dry or operating at very low levels. A prolonged drought last year led Sicilian authorities to ration water, even for domestic use in major cities.

Local breeders, struggling to get their water, now fear they may soon be forced to send the animals, bred for centuries for dairy products such as cheese and ricotta, to slaughter.

"There is no other way, no other solution," Cammarata said. "If every last drop of water falling from the sky is not collected, Sicily will become a desert”, he added.

The cost of water consumption has doubled for Cammarata and he has to rely on the Carabinieri Forestry Department's tanker truck that every 15 days reaches the province's farms and livestock breeders.

"We are giving support to these farms struggling with this unprecedented drought," said Alessandro Panzarella, a member of the Carabinieri Command for Forest, Environmental and Agri-Food, who with his olive-green tanker truck drives along arid and dusty roads to help bring vital supplies.

"With only one tanker truck for the whole province, it becomes impossible to meet the needs of all the farmers," he said.

"We visit many farms throughout the province of Caltanissetta and the situation is disastrous."

Sicily has suffered months of below-average rainfall, with the Italian government declaring a state of emergency. The island has long grappled with climate change-related high temperatures, setting a European heat record in 2021 of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119 degrees Fahrenheit). - Report from Reuters