Heatwave puts Europe on verge of record temperature
In this blistering heat, few think of the impact on food or farming, but poor harvests will affect us all
EUROPE is putting Britain’s heatwave in the shade as temperatures risk passing an all-time high of 48C (118F) this weekend, say meteorologists.
It has prompted unusual measures, from gorillas being given banana ice cubes in a French zoo to the horsedrawn Fiakers of Vienna being taken out of service to spare the animals from discomfort.
While most areas were due to peak in temperature yesterday, Portugal, Spain and France face even hotter weather this weekend. Lisbon could be hotter than Death Valley, forecasters said, after Abrantes in central Portugal topped Europe’s temperature scales at 45.2C (113F). Eight regions in Portugal have broken local records, with peaks of 47C (117F) forecast in some places today. The hot air mass from North Africa has so far caused two deaths, in southeastern Spain.
Northern Europe is also suffering – Mount Kebnekaise in Sweden is no longer the Scandinavian country’s highest peak at 6,925ft, because of its melting glacier. In Switzerland, dog owners were advised to put shoes on their pets to avoid burnt paws.
The Met Office said July was Britain’s third-warmest in more than a century, with temperatures hitting 30C (86F) in the South again yesterday.
At the peak of the heatwave, deaths rose to more than 650 above average as temperatures remained above 28C (82F) for 15 consecutive days, from June 25 to July 9. Dr Adrian Boyle, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “The heatwave will have been associated with a number of excess deaths.” Holiday flights face disruption next week as Ryanair pilots in some European countries voted to strike next Friday.
THE return of the heatwave, with temperatures expected to hit 91F (33C) in parts of the country this weekend, has found an unlikely victim: the traditional Christmas lunch.
The scorching weather is promising smaller and lower-quality harvests of traditional festive foods. Stilton, a staple of the festive cheeseboard, is expected to be in short supply after the warm weather caused a shortage of lush grass for cows to feed on, meaning their milk production has decreased.
“The hot weather has impacted us. The grass is not there for cows to graze on,” said Kim Kettle, production director at Clawson cheesemakers.
Mr Kettle, who supplies Marks & Spencer, said farms are having to use winter feed and support the cows with vitamins. He added: “We are receiving 2 per cent less volume of milk. Any variance in the milk is going to impact the quality of the cheese. It’s definitely going to be difficult to achieve the quality of Stilton that we’re used to.”
Brussels sprouts are also likely to be in short supply and carrot and potato crops are already much diminished. The National Farmers’ Union recently requested relief from the “crippling impact” of the heatwave, including the relaxation of rules for accessing extra water supplies. Farmers have warned the sprout crop will have to be harvested early, weeks before Christmas.
Jack Ward, chief executive of the British Growers Association, told the Huffington Post: “With sprouts, you are trying to hit peak production around Christmas, which is why it’s so difficult. It also gets more problematic if you have too much warmth in the run-up to Christmas. If it’s too warm, you could end up with sprouts at the start of December that were destined for the second and third week.”
Those doing their Christmas grocery shopping are likely to notice spindly carrots and small potatoes, as there has not been enough rainfall for the crops to grow as usual. Farmers are having to resort to irrigation after months of dry weather and fear they will not even be able to sell much of their harvest.
Some meats may also be affected by the hot summer, with those who prefer beef and lamb to turkey likely to face disappointment.
Cows are being sent to slaughter early because of the poor quality of the grass, while lambs are being killed at far lighter weights.
Nick Allen, of the British Meat Processors Association, told BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today: “The first thing we noticed was people sending lambs in for slaughter at slightly lighter weights than normal. The moment they’re running out of grass on the farm they get rid of them earlier.”
Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has had to step in this week, reassuring farmers that the Government will support them through the heatwave.
Farmers may be in for a long summer, though, as the hot weather shows no sign of letting up, with high temperatures expected until at least the middle of next week.
Our psyche in this country is used to green, lush countryside. It takes a summer like this one to remind us of that. There is an unfamiliar dullness to the landscape of our Peak District dairy farm.
Our pastures are burnt brown; the sycamore trees appear to be dying.
Farmers spend even more time than the average British person discussing and speculating about the weather. It’s not really surprising – the weather is as relevant to a farmer as the roadworks are to someone who makes a living from driving. At the moment, the weather – or, more specifically, the heatwave – is all anyone is talking about. Our local livestock market in Leek has become one of the most buoyant in the country as farmers look at their remaining fodder, worry about their ability to feed their cows through the winter and decide to sell up.
Last week, the National Farmers’ Union called an emergency meeting with the environment secretary Michael Gove, so concerned was it about the effects of the drought. Mr Gove has now promised that bureaucracy will not stand in the way of farmers receiving help and that food production is a Government priority. However, the help needs to be specific in the short term and involve a sober look at the cost of expanding livestock herds in the longer term, otherwise what has happened this summer will simply happen again.
When it comes to the weather, we are curious animals with exceedingly short memories. Last year’s Storm Doris and this year’s Beast from the East are already barely recalled. The 24-hour news and weather culture also leads to much hyperbole and catastrophising. Older and wiser sages shake their heads and tell you that they have seen it all before, and that nature has an amazing way of putting it all right in the end.
However, this year, for farmers, weather patterns have occurred in a particularly worrying way. Hard as it seems to remember now, spring was unpromising: late and cold. Early harvest – first-cut silage, harvested in mid-may – was sparse. Farmers were not too concerned; there was plenty of time for the situation to correct itself. But as the summer sweltered on and hardly any rain fell, cold reason dictated that this was becoming extremely unlikely. Grass growth crashed in June – a once-in-30-year occurrence. May, June and July are the prime months for grass growth.
Comparisons are being made to 1976, but there are a couple of significant differences between the two. First, there was a good early crop in 1976, and secondly, farming now is on a totally different scale. Supermarket-led food production and economies of scale have pressured many farmers into serious expansion. Certainly in dairy farming the message for years has been that if you stand still, you will be swallowed up – so you expand.
This is a model with significant fault lines. Over the past few years, even in our traditional farming area, herds have become bigger and bigger, as sustainability has succumbed to economic necessity. But, in this weather, it is these farmers who are really struggling – far more than the average 100-cow herdsperson. A week or two’s continuous rain, even at this point, would make a difference to the average farm – but it wouldn’t do nearly enough to address the huge feed shortfall for the bigger herds. We’ve had a few heavy downpours of late, but they barely touched the surface and brought only a hint of green. What we need is a steady, continuous British downpour.
It is tempting to see all this as a farmers’ problem. The general public don’t tend to see the relevance, to them, of poor harvest and drought. Increasingly, they only notice the connection between the plate and the supermarket, as opposed to the plate and the field. The further away the average person gets from food production and its messy, gritty reality, the less prepared they are for the sock in the guts that nature can throw at us. Food has been sanitised and packaged to the point where we just expect it to be there, as if the world has become so smart that factors as old-fashioned as the elements are irrelevant to how we eat.
But whether your dietary preferences are vegan, vegetarian or meat-eating, the weather can quickly affect the supermarket shelves, and so affect us all.
And there is more than just our plates at stake here. We talk about environmental concerns, but expanding herds and earlier harvests are bad for the bees. Some environmental schemes might need to be compromised this year, as the need for livestock fodder is so acute. There is talk in Ireland of encouraging arable farmers to produce some emergency feed crops such as kale and turnips. Everything has a knock-on effect – and affects us all.
Political opinion in this country has become bitterly polarised. This has also been the trend when it comes to managing the countryside. But conservationists, farmers and anyone with an interest in food or the land must see this summer as a sign that they need to sit down together and compromise. Otherwise everyone will suffer – not just us farmers.