Crop failure and bankruptcy threaten farmers as drought grips Europe

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/crop-failure-and-bankruptcy-threaten-farmers-as-drought-grips-europe

Arthur Neslen
Fri 20 Jul 2018 08.11 EDT
Last modified on Fri 20 Jul 2018 17.21 EDT

Farmers across northern and central Europe are facing crop failure and bankruptcy as one of the most intense regional droughts in recent memory strengthens its grip.

States of emergency have been declared in Latvia and Lithuania, while the sun continues to bake Swedish fields that have received only 12% of their normal rainfall.

The abnormally hot temperatures – which have topped 30C [86F] in the Arctic Circle – are in line with climate change trends, according to the World Meteorological Organization. And as about 50 wildfires rage across Sweden, no respite from the heatwave is yet in sight.

Lennart Nilsson, a 55-year-old cattle farmer from Falkenberg near Malmo and co-chair of the Swedish Farmers Association, said it was the worst drought he had experienced.

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The picture is little different in the Netherlands, where Iris Bouwers, a 25-year-old farmer, said the parched summer had been a “catastrophe” for her farm.

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If anything, the situation is even worse in Poland, Belarus and the Czech Republic, where vegetation stress has taken hold. In parts of Germany, some farmers are reportedly destroying arid crops.
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After June was declared the second warmest on record, the European commission pledged to help farmers with a raft of measures, including the temporary suspension of “greening” obligations partly intended to prevent climate change.
[So problems caused by climate disruption result in cutbacks on efforts to combat climate disruption!]

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The European Drought Observatory (EDO) has described the drought as “an extensive and severe anomaly” affecting Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, the Baltics, the Netherlands and northern Germany.

A spokeswoman for the EU’s Joint Research Centre, which oversees the EDO, said farmers should prepare to adapt to a warmer climate with “diversification or change of crop types and varieties, but also a more efficient use of water”.

All water-related sectors “should be preparing sustainable adaptation measures towards an increase of drought frequency and intensity in the future”, she said.