Farmers across the region don’t just have to contend with drought but also less predictable weather overall. Read more at straitstimes.com.
LETUR, Spain – A network of ditches dug in the Middle Ages has allowed farmers in the hillside hamlet of Letur in southern Spain to grow olive trees, tomatoes and onions in one of Europe’s most arid regions for centuries. Now the punishing drought that’s spreading across the continent is threatening even this ancient oasis.
Home to the European Union’s only desert, Spain has experienced drought more severely, and for longer, than the bloc’s other major economies. Its proximity to Africa puts it straight in the path of hot air currents as they make their way northwards from the Sahara desert. The situation isn’t yet as dire in other parts of the EU, where the official forecast is for the grain harvest as a whole to rebound about 7 per cent from last season. Precipitation in France, the bloc’s top grain producer, has improved since the winter dry spell, and crop ratings for the 2023 wheat harvest are running at the highest for this time in more than a decade.
Europe’s preparations for a drier future are struggling to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate. The continent has warmed nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world over the last three decades, according to the World Meteorological Organisation, and the economic impact has been significant.
The changes in weather match scientific projections for less precipitation and higher temperatures in Europe on a warmer planet, said Dr Andrea Toreti, a senior researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, an independent scientific body that advises the bloc’s officials. But this level of drought was only expected to occur regularly in 2043. “If nothing is done, we expect that this event could occur almost every year,” he said.
The Spanish government has scrambled to find solutions. Despite spending billions over the last few decades to improve its water-management system, rainfall that’s been 19 per cent below the historical average since last October has left Spain’s reservoirs at about half their capacity. Planned measures to address the water shortage will cost more than €22 billion .
The tensions are on display in Almería, a province two hours south of Letur that regularly records the highest temperatures in Europe. Its land used to be so dry and barren that spaghetti westerns, including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood, were filmed there. Everything changed in 1979 after the government built nearly 300km of canals and pipelines – known as the Tajo-Segura transfer – that brought water from the central plain into the southern desert.
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