Anti-hail: You can fight hail Hail has always been the farmer’s biggest enemy, being such an unpredictable phenomenon – it’s impossible to forecast its exact intensity or just when and where it will strike. A heavy hailstorm can decimate or even completely destroy the results of months and months of hard work in a matter of minutes. The solution finally arrived in the 1960’s with the advent of polyolefin fibres: production of the first nets started and they were laid over the crops to prevent the hailstones from damaging them; the first experimental systems were installed in orchards and it was immediately clear that nets would be the only really effective solution to the problem. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that today this pro-active method of crop defence is increasingly replacing the traditional means of passive defence (insurance policies, cooperative funds, company funds or government subsidy in the case of a declared state of emergency) – which may guarantee the producer’s survival, but not his earnings.