As global warming accelerates, the specter of drought haunts France’s green farmlands. Even now, before the start of summer there, 15 administrative departments have had to restrict water use as farmers warn that the current situation will have an adverse impact on their crop yields.
Few in France speak of this looming catastrophe, but all the signs of a record drought are there.
“No region has been spared. We see the earth cracking every day. Yesterday I was at a farmer’s house in the Puy-de-Dôme region in central France; he was watering the wheat. If things continue like this , farmers who can irrigate their crops will be able to cope, but the rest will face a drastic reduction in their yields,” Christiane Lambert, director of France’s largest agricultural union, the FNSEA, told AFP.
Since last autumn we have seen “enormous droughts” in Spain and Portugal, and the same phenomenon has spread to the south of France, according to Lambert. But “what is unusual about this season is that the drought is affecting the regions north of the Loire”, the river that divides the south and north of France.
The water reservoirs could not be filled
The French Ministry of Agriculture is well aware of the crisis. “Winter crops such as wheat and barley, which are currently growing (before further cultivation), are starting to experience conditions that will affect yields,” a spokesman said.
The hot and dry weather in recent weeks in France could also affect spring crops, such as corn, sunflowers and beets, as well as the fodder needed to feed livestock.
French energy flows could also be affected. “In addition, the drought has a negative impact on energy production, since nuclear power plants need a lot of water to cool the reactors.”
The increase in temperatures this April -despite the fact that the first day of the month snowed in France- caused a 25% decrease in rainfall compared to normal patterns.
This heat wave is “remarkable for how early it is, for its duration and for its geographical extent,” the French Meteorological Office said.
These conditions, combined with last winter’s unusually low rainfall, have produced the current drought: The rainfall deficit for two successive seasons meant that “the water tables could not be filled,” Haziza said.
“So very quickly we ended up in a critical situation, before the summer even started.” For Haziza, who studies how water is distributed and circulated around the planet, the reasons for the current scarcity are clear.
“The lack of rain is directly caused by climate change, there is no doubt about it,” he said. “Drought is one of the first consequences that we can see. As things stand, this phenomenon occurs earlier and earlier and spreads every year.”
In fact, it is the first time that France has suffered what meteorologists call a “flash drought”, a phenomenon often experienced by the hottest and most arid countries, in which the soil and crops dry up in just five days.
The situation is out of control
The drought has hit some regions particularly hard, notably in southeastern France, the east of the country and the Poitou-Charentes region in the west.
“Water reservoirs in some regions are easily filled, while others are not,” explains Haziza. “But now even regions that thought they wouldn’t have a drought, like northern France – not to mention large parts of northern Europe, including Belgium – are starting to feel its effects.”
By imposing restrictions on those 15 departments, the French Executive is managing the crisis, but is still far from tackling its cause.
The measures vary according to the department: from the prohibition of watering the gardens or fields at certain times to the total prohibition of using the water to wash the car.
Following talks with France’s water companies and farmers’ representatives, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that the Third Agricultural Revolution, a fund launched in April to help farmers cope with climate change, will double to €40 million.
The French government also announced in late April that water companies could spend an additional €100m to help farmers adapt to climate change or create new reservoirs.
France has responded better than most developed countries to the threat of climate change, beginning the transition from fossil fuels to nuclear power in the 1970s. President Emmanuel Macron has recently reiterated his support for nuclear power.
Still, the measures designed to deal with the current drought pale in comparison to the forces of climate change that are driving it. According to Haziza, France must modify its agricultural model in the long term, which includes a change from its current production-oriented paradigm, which fuels the problem of drought by driving deforestation.
“The whole system is out of control,” he said. “We’re running into climate change head-on.”
*Adapted from its original French version
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