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Drought is causing problems for farmers across Europe, with some EU member states calling for support.
French MEP Michel Dantin has written to the EU Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan twice, calling on him to do more to help farmers affected. He described the situation as “urgent”.
AGRA Facts reported that Dantin suggested a derogation from greening requirements for French farmers and measures to manage the meat market. He said that failure to be flexible about environmental measures would put their legitimacy in question.
Nordic issues
Nordic and Baltic countries are also suffering. The Danish and Swedish farm organisations wrote an op-ed in a number of media outlets expressing fears over declining farm incomes and increased urbanisation as a result.
While acknowledging that farming must be able to adapt to weather changes, they insist that this year it has exceeded any farmer’s reasonable expectations.
Head of meat sector at Danish Agriculture & Food Council Nicolaj Christoffersen and senior adviser on beef and lamb at the Federation of Swedish Farmers Viktoria Östlund called on the EU’s policymakers to “start drawing conclusions from the ongoing event” to assess different measures that could be included in the next CAP to alleviate these situations going forward.
Ad-hoc decisions
This is “not the last major regional crises for European farmers ... the CAP must encompass mechanisms to deal with these situations systematically, rather than trying to get by through ad-hoc decisions every time”, they said.
Other agricultural organisations have also written to Commissioner Hogan from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the drought.
“This year has proven to be everything but an average year ... instead it has been an exceptional year... that calls for exceptional decisions,” they said.
MARS report
Over the past 20 years, there are few growing seasons in which dry conditions have had a greater impact on pasture productivity in Europe, a report prepared for the European Commission states.
Pasture production in northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, southern Sweden, UK and Ireland have been most affected.
Monitoring Agricultural Resources (MARS) used satellite technology to assess the quality of pasture growth in the EU this growing season. The satellites measure fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation by vegetation (fAPAR ) and create a pasture productivity index (PPI).
The average fAPAR between May and July 2018 for all of these countries is the lowest on the historical archive (1999-2017).
Pasture conditions in northern Europe, update as at 31 July 2018
Pasture productivity is below average in northeastern France and central Czech Republic, but the effects of the dry conditions are less severe than in the countries mentioned previously.
Similarly, in the Baltic countries and eastern Poland, pasture conditions from May to July are close to or below the average. These areas had rainfall in the second half of June.
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