Italy and Spain, two of the main agricultural producing countries in South-West Europe together with France, suffer the consequences of the drought for the second consecutive year.
About 60% of Spanish fields are affected by dry conditions, and the outlook is hardening for Italian farmers as well.
The last boreal winter in both countries was exceptionally dry and with moderate temperatures both in southern Europe and in the west, which caused a reduction in the availability of water for the use of the fields.
In the rest of the territory of the European Union (EU) the picture is different and grain production in the bloc is expected to grow by 8% annually, helped by a string of rains in the last month in countries like Germany and Poland, which in some cases doubled the averages for this period.
“Planting in the Po River area traditionally starts at the end of February or beginning of March, but right now the land is too dry,” Massimiliano Giansanti, head of Italy’s General Confederation of Agriculture (Confagricolutra), told the agency. Bloomberg News.
In this context, he warned that “more is expected to sow, less can be harvested,” and indicated that “the situation could become dramatic in a few weeks.”
Precisely the Po River, the longest in Italy, suffered last year the lowest water levels in 70 years.
Southern Europe –impacted by drought- has a specific weight in tomato and fruit crops, an industry of 20,000 million euros in annual sales and 8,000 million euros in exports.
Giansanti warned that soybean and corn crops are also at risk, which will increase the costs of ranchers and dairy farms.
In the case of Spain, there are already irrecoverable losses in 3.5 million hectares of grain crops, according to local farmers’ organizations, especially in regions such as Andalusia, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura and Murcia.
Nut orchards and vineyards are also affected, and the lack of flowers – and therefore pollen – is making beekeeping difficult.
This situation could put pressure on inflation whose food component continues without moderating, in contrast to others such as energy.
In the Eurozone, raw food inflation was 14.7% annually and 1.9% monthly in March, according to Eurostat: in both cases exceeding the general average of 6.9% and 0.9%, respectively.
Tomatoes, for example, increased by 30% compared to a year ago in Italy.
In response, the Italian government led by right-wing Giorgia Meloni last week approved the “Siccità Decree” (drought) creating a council to assess the situation and recognize urgently needed infrastructure works.
The idea of it is to speed up the process to carry out works that alleviate the situation, focusing, for example, on the creation of reservoirs that collect water for agricultural use, the reuse of flows, and simplifying the process to create desalination facilities.
“For about twenty years Italy has been the victim of a cyclical problem linked to drought. No government chose to face it in a structural way until now. We chose to do it before it becomes an emergency ”, Meloni pointed out in a video posted on his social networks.
Source: Ambito
