Drought Crushing Spain: Wheat & Barley Losses @ 50%, Rainfall Down 75% In Multiple Regions

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Things in neighbouring, northwestern Castilla y León are worse still. The drought has ravaged the area, which is known as Spain’s granary, cutting the wheat and barley harvest by 50%. José Roales, who grows wheat, barley, peas, sunflowers, chickpeas, lentils, and alfalfa in the region’s Zamora province, is one of many staring at an alarming balance sheet. “I’ve been harvesting 1,000kg of cereals per hectare,” the farmer says. “In a normal year I’d get 4,000kg per hectare. The thing is that the first 2,500kg goes on covering my costs. That gives you an idea of how things are this year.”

But, says Roales – who is also the cereals chief of the COAG farming association – others are suffering even more. “Given how things are in other bits of Castilla y León, I still consider myself lucky. In Palencia province, 80% of the cereals haven’t been reaped this year. It’s far, far worse.”

According to the Spanish farming association Asaja, the country is suffering from both a lack of rain over the past five or six years and the gradual diminishing and salinisation of water in aquifers and wells near the coast, which makes irrigation difficult. With the Duero, Segura and Júcar river basins already officially declared to be in drought and some areas seeing 75% less rainfall this year, the focus is now turning to how the drought could affect olives, almonds, pistachios and walnuts.

“All those are tree crops; they have well-established roots that will seek out water deep in the ground, so it will take longer to see how the drought affects them,” says a technical spokesman for Asaja. “It’s going to be a really, really tough year. But we won’t know just how tough until the autumn.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/08/spain-drought-farmers-climate-change-extremadura