Features

Dry land

The historic drought Catalonia is currently suffering will cause millions in losses in the Catalan countryside and end up having a direct and significant impact on the wallets of consumers when they go shopping

“The Ebre hasn’t been managed well. We have been asking for figures since October”
Some figures talk of up to 1.2 billion euros in losses resulting from harvesting crops it will not be possible to sell
Catalonia imports 60% of its food, and of the remaining 40%, more than half (57%) comes from the region of Lleida

The sit­u­a­tion in the Cata­lan coun­try­side is dra­matic. No less than 80% of the rain­fed ce­real har­vest (mainly wheat, bar­ley and oats), al­most half of the ir­ri­gated crops (maize and rice) and 60% of the fod­der in­tended for live­stock has been lost. The next olive oil sea­son is also at risk, and if it doesn’t rain soon, things could be as bad as last year, when 75% of the olive har­vest was lost. Mean­while, fruit yields are ex­pected to be 70% lower than in 2022, with a pre­dicted loss of more than 800,000 tonnes, mainly pears, ap­ples and peaches. The above data pro­vided by the as­so­ci­a­tion of Young Farm­ers and Ranch­ers of Cat­alo­nia (JARC) and the Fruit Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion of Cat­alo­nia (Afru­cat) re­veal the ex­tent of the cri­sis fac­ing the Cata­lan coun­try­side as a re­sult of the drought.

Nei­ther the De­part­ment of Cli­mate Ac­tion, Food and Rural Agenda of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment nor Agrose­guro (the com­pany in charge of man­ag­ing in­sur­ance for the coun­try­side) have so far dared to quan­tify the losses. Nev­er­the­less, the first es­ti­mates of the com­pen­sa­tion that in­sur­ers will have to pay out to farm­ers be­cause of the drought are al­ready record-break­ing: a min­i­mum of 43 mil­lion euros in claims sub­mit­ted for the loss of 110,000 hectares of oats, wheat and bar­ley out of the 130,000 hectares that are in­sured. Of this 43 mil­lion, 25 mil­lion cor­re­spond to the re­gion of Lleida. At the same time, there is a good part of the har­vest that is not in­sured, while in the case of those crops that are in­sured, many poli­cies only cover con­tin­gen­cies such as fire or hail dam­age, but not the lack of water.

While it will be hard to as­sess the full eco­nomic im­pact of the tragedy until all the har­vests are over, the fig­ures put for­ward by some agri­cul­tural or­gan­i­sa­tions talk of up to 1.2 bil­lion euros in losses re­sult­ing from har­vest­ing crops that will not be able to be sold. In the spe­cific case of sweet fruit, for ex­am­ple, JARC val­ues the har­vest de­rived from the 12,000 hectares that de­pend on the Urgell canal at 250 mil­lion euros. The area ir­ri­gated by the canal alone pro­duces 55% of Cat­alo­nia’s ap­ples and pears.

Car­les Vi­cente, head of or­gan­i­sa­tion at the Union of Farm­ers, dis­tin­guishes be­tween two crises re­sult­ing from drought that over­lap: “On the one hand, the one that af­fects rain­fed crops and 70% of the cul­ti­vated area in Cat­alo­nia, some­thing we have be­come used to. And, on the other, a new cri­sis, which is that of ir­ri­ga­tion.” The prob­lem, ac­cord­ing to Vi­cente, is that in the lat­ter case “there are no tools, which leaves us com­pletely vul­ner­a­ble”. What is also re­gret­table, he adds, is that poor gov­ern­ment plan­ning means there was no time to pre­pare, which could have “min­imised the im­pact”.

All more ex­pen­sive

Apart from the huge losses, many rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the agri­cul­tural sec­tor warn that the fu­ture of many farms is also at risk. Vi­cente stresses that “al­though the pre­dom­i­nant com­pa­nies in our coun­try are fam­ily-owned, in many cases in­vest­ments have been made and so this cri­sis could cause more than one to close down.”

Yet the im­pact may also be felt by larger com­pa­nies. Re­cently, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fruit sec­tor em­ploy­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tion, Afru­cat, met with the UGT trade union and an­nounced the pos­si­bil­ity of ini­ti­at­ing wide­spread tem­po­rary lay-offs due to the dras­tic drop in fruit pro­duc­tion. Cata­lan em­ploy­ers es­ti­mate that the drought could af­fect be­tween 10,000 and 15,000 work­ers out of the 40,000 jobs that the sec­tor cur­rently gen­er­ates. Afru­cat’s gen­eral man­ager, Manel Simon, also said that tem­po­rary lay-offs will not be enough and he ar­gues that the sec­tor needs aid, while the UGT de­manded a “shock plan to save trees and jobs”.

The drama ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try­side will in­evitably end up af­fect­ing us all. Cat­alo­nia im­ports about 60% of the food it con­sumes, and of the re­main­ing 40%, more than half (57%) comes from the re­gion of Lleida alone. Sergi Balué, from the sweet fruit sec­tor of the Young Farm­ers and Ranch­ers of Cat­alo­nia, is very clear: “The im­pact of the drought will be coun­try­wide: it may end up chang­ing the struc­ture of how we do things.”

First of all, it will have an im­pact in the coun­try­side, with a rise in un­em­ploy­ment and a dras­tic re­duc­tion in ex­ports, but it will also end up hav­ing an im­pact on the con­sumer, with prices likely to rise sig­nif­i­cantly.

Martí Costal, head of JARC’s water sec­tor, sums up the sce­nario: “If we have to im­port more food, we will have to pay a price. On the one hand, we will lose food sov­er­eignty and will have to de­pend more on other coun­tries. And, in ad­di­tion, it will have an im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, with a larger CO2 foot­print and no guar­an­tees we will be able to com­ply with EU en­vi­ron­men­tal, labour and health reg­u­la­tions.”

So far, the prices of legumes, veg­eta­bles, tu­bers, olives and sweet fruit have al­ready risen by more than 16% and they will likely con­tinue to rise. Faced with this sce­nario, the farm­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives call for the need to pri­ori­tise the pri­mary sec­tor when mak­ing de­ci­sions about how to deal with the lack of water: “We can do with­out many things, but not food and drink. Agri­cul­ture and live­stock are es­sen­tial for ob­tain­ing qual­ity local food,” warns Costal, who adds that it will be nec­es­sary to pri­ori­tise pro­duc­tion, be­cause it is of pri­mary ne­ces­sity, al­though other as­pects must also be taken into ac­count, such as guar­an­tee­ing good main­te­nance of the land, the eco­nomic fab­ric, the man­age­ment of the en­vi­ron­ment and avoid­ing fires.

“They have aban­doned us”

Farm­ers have been de­mand­ing mea­sures from the au­thor­i­ties for months, and they com­plain about the slow­ness and in­suf­fi­ciency of those mea­sures that have been taken so far.

“The au­thor­i­ties have not re­acted. The aid they have an­nounced is only for cer­tain sec­tors, when in re­al­ity we are fac­ing a cri­sis across the board, af­fect­ing every­one from bee­keep­ers – who have har­vested 40% less honey than last year – to rice farm­ers – who will get 50% less rice this year. All this will end up hav­ing a di­rect im­pact on the con­sumer,” warns Costal.

The JARC of­fi­cial also de­mands that guar­an­tees be pro­vided to farm­ers: “The au­thor­i­ties pro­vide no se­cu­rity to peo­ple, in the sense of guar­an­tee­ing that they will not let them down. In the case of fruit farm­ers, for ex­am­ple, they are wait­ing to hear whether to sac­ri­fice the fruit har­vest and so save the trees, with all that en­tails. Peo­ple are very dis­tressed, but the au­thor­i­ties say noth­ing. They have aban­doned us.”

The farm­ers do not know what water they will have avail­able. In April, for the first time in its 161-year his­tory, the Urgell canal, which sup­plies 120,000 peo­ple with water and ir­ri­gates 70,000 hectares of farm­land, was closed. Since then, the only water al­lowed to cir­cu­late is to sup­ply the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and to pre­vent fruit trees from dying. This has led anx­ious farm­ers to re­sort to des­per­ate means, in­clud­ing open­ing new wells or pick­ing fruit or har­vest­ing ce­re­als early. The rest pray that the rain fore­cast by me­te­o­rol­o­gists will save their har­vests.

One of the main com­plaints of agri­cul­tural or­gan­i­sa­tions is a lack of ad­e­quate plan­ning, es­pe­cially in terms of water man­age­ment. This has led to such ac­tions as a protest march last month of around 40 trac­tors and 200 peo­ple from Urgell and other areas of La Plana to Lleida, or an­other from Batea (Terra Alta) and the coun­ties of Ter­res de l’Ebre that saw farm­ers gather in front of the head­quar­ters of the Ebro Hy­dro­graphic Con­fed­er­a­tion (CHE) in Zaragoza.

Yet farmer’s union head Vi­cente dif­fer­en­ti­ates be­tween the man­age­ment of the in­ter­nal river basins, in the hands of the Cata­lan au­thor­i­ties, and those of the River Ebre, which is under the man­age­ment of the CHE. “The Ebre has not been man­aged cor­rectly. We have been ask­ing for fig­ures since Oc­to­ber. There is not much trans­parency,” he com­plains.

The unions are de­mand­ing tougher and more ur­gent mea­sures, es­pe­cially from Spain’s state gov­ern­ment. In Vi­cente’s opin­ion, the state aid an­nounced so far has merely “dis­ap­pointed” farm­ers. “In ad­di­tion, the aid mea­sures were an­nounced for the whole state, mainly for the Guadalquivir and Gua­di­ana areas, and not for Cat­alo­nia specif­i­cally. Apart from that, they are clearly in­suf­fi­cient, since they fore­see 250 mil­lion euros in aid that must be dis­trib­uted through­out the state and which, there­fore, will have a very lim­ited im­pact on cer­tain sec­tors and re­gions, such as that of Cat­alo­nia,” he adds.

A com­pli­cated fu­ture

In fact, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dif­fer­ent agri­cul­tural unions all com­plain that just about noth­ing has been done by the au­thor­i­ties since 2008, when the last major drought was ex­pe­ri­enced.

“We should have been work­ing on al­ter­na­tives years ago so that we don’t have to de­pend on look­ing to the sky. We just haven’t adapted,” says Costal. At that time, it fi­nally rained a lot in late spring but this year the fore­casts are not so good, and both the state and Cata­lan me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal agen­cies, Aemet and Me­teo­cat, say that they do not ex­pect enough rain this year for the reser­voirs to re­cover so that we can leave the emer­gency sit­u­a­tion be­hind.

Nean­while, JARC has made a se­ries of pro­pos­als aimed at help­ing the agri­cul­tural sec­tor adapt to the new re­al­ity of more fre­quent and per­sis­tent droughts that the cli­ma­tol­o­gists have been an­nounc­ing for some time. Among these pro­pos­als is the im­prove­ment of in­for­ma­tion mech­a­nisms. Sergi Balué, head of JARC’s sweet fruit sec­tor, calls for “im­prov­ing in­for­ma­tion on water re­serves in order to be able to make the right de­ci­sions”. In fact, fruit pro­duc­ers cur­rently find them­selves in a dif­fi­cult dilemma: ei­ther they have to throw away the fruit in order to en­sure the sur­vival of the trees, or they de­cide to go ahead and risk their trees dying.

“There’s only enough water to ir­ri­gate once more from the Urgell canal. If we can’t water them, then the sur­vival of the trees will be dif­fi­cult. And on top of that it will be very dif­fi­cult that the trees will be able to bear fruit next year,” says Balué.

JARC says it has sent a se­ries of pro­pos­als to the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment call­ing for such mea­sures as a more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of water, ac­ti­vat­ing a line of sub­sidised loans for pro­duc­ers from the Cata­lan In­sti­tute of Fi­nance, di­rect aid for losses, and analysing the spe­cific ap­pli­ca­tion re­quire­ments for each sec­tor, giv­ing pri­or­ity to the most ur­gent de­pend­ing on their sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, the Union of Farm­ers has also made sim­i­lar pro­pos­als, and in a re­cent meet­ing it held with the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of Spain’s Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture at the sub-del­e­ga­tion of the State Gov­ern­ment in Lleida, the union called for the com­bi­na­tion of di­rect aid and for more flex­i­bil­ity for farm­ers af­fected by the drought in the reg­u­la­tions for ap­ply­ing for di­rect aid of the Com­mon Agri­cul­tural Pol­icy and rural de­vel­op­ment under the Eu­ro­pean Re­gional De­vel­op­ment Fund (ERDF).

“There’s a lack of de­sali­na­tion plants, so as to in­crease the vol­ume of re­gen­er­ated water, as well as aid so that farm­ers can in­vest in more ef­fi­cient ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems as well as anti-leak­age sys­tems on farms. The mod­erni­sa­tion of ir­ri­ga­tion has been post­poned for far too long, and more money needs to be in­vested in the re­search and tech­nolo­gies for mak­ing water re­sources more ef­fi­cient,” con­cludes the JARC of­fi­cial.

fea­ture drought

fea­ture drought

fea­ture drought

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THE STATE OF THE RESERVOIRS THE STATE OF THE RESERVOIRS THE STATE OF THE RESERVOIRS

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