Spring Freeze Devastates Crops in Europe

A sud­den cold snap stretch­ing from France to Greece has dam­aged a range of crops at cru­cial moments in their devel­op­ment, includ­ing olive trees.

Farmers in Italy have been hit par­tic­u­larly hard by the unsea­son­ably cold weather. Freezing tem­per­a­tures abruptly inter­rupted the oth­er­wise warm spring and impacted the blos­som­ing of fruit trees.

According to the first esti­mates, freez­ing nights have affected a range of fruit and veg­etable crops, with a spe­cific con­cern for vine­yards, par­tic­u­larly exposed ones in the northerly Po Valley.

Damage has also been recorded in the south­ern Italian region of Puglia, accord­ing to the farm­ers asso­ci­a­tion Coldiretti. Temperatures dropped as low as –5 ºC in areas of the olive-oil-rich region and fruit (not only olive) yields ​“have been halved.”

In the fol­low­ing weeks, it will also be pos­si­ble to under­stand the extent of the dam­age to olive groves in the south of the coun­try, in which the pre­vi­ously high tem­per­a­tures had trig­gered the early stages of flow­er­ing.

According to the Italian Confederation of Farmers (CIA), the cen­tral and north­ern regions of Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont were severely hit.

In these areas, dam­ages could impact up to 75 per­cent of the crop yields. The CIA explained that in Tuscany, where tem­per­a­tures had dropped to –7 ºC in cer­tain areas, some farm­ers chose to set hay bales on fire to raise the tem­per­a­tures in the vine­yards dur­ing the cold­est nights.

In Umbria, olive grow­ers are still esti­mat­ing the dam­ages after the tem­per­a­ture shock, with a sud­den drop from 27 ºC to –8 ºC. ​“The frost has cer­tainly left its mark there,” the con­fed­er­a­tion said.

In Umbria, more dam­age is expected in the region’s vine­yards. ​“Under these con­di­tions, even with a per­fect cli­mate, the har­vest will be dis­ap­point­ing,” the CIA said.

Overall, the con­fed­er­a­tion esti­mates that the low tem­per­a­tures in April have cut Italian agri­cul­ture yields by at least 60 per­cent across the coun­try.

“We are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” Dino Scanavino, the pres­i­dent of the CIA, said. ​“A quick response is needed, such as the dec­la­ra­tion of a nat­ural dis­as­ter to acti­vate the com­pen­sa­tion pro­ce­dures for farm­ers.”

“At the same time, we need to boost inno­va­tion in risk man­age­ment instru­ments, which must face the cli­mate change in progress,” he added. ​“It is also needed to stim­u­late and increase the con­tri­bu­tion to crop, ani­mal and plant insur­ance.”

Scanavino also asked for new funds from European and national sources to finance ​“inno­v­a­tive tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems of crop pro­tec­tion.”

Rainfall that fol­lowed the frost has also hurt pro­duc­ers, Coldietti added. While rain­fall in the Po Valley was 92 per­cent below aver­age in March, the lat­est heavy storms might do more harm than good to relieve the drought.

Coldiretti said that crop regions need steady and con­sis­tent rains to reverse the cur­rent hydro­log­i­cal scarcity but do not ben­e­fit from short peri­ods of heavy rains, which do more dam­age than good.

According to Coldiretti, the steady increase of extreme weather events has caused more than €14 bil­lion of dam­age to Italian agri­cul­ture.

In Greece, freez­ing tem­per­a­tures in a few areas have severely impacted a range of fruit and veg­etable crops, includ­ing vine­yards and some olive groves.

According to Agrotypos, olive grow­ers are just now begin­ning to esti­mate the true extent of the dam­ages in some areas of the Peloponnese penin­sula. The organic agri­cul­ture coop­er­a­tive, Biolivia, in Olynthos, said that freeze has impacted olive grow­ers, with some groves in Halkdiki hit by frost.

However, the over­all sit­u­a­tion is not com­pa­ra­ble to what hap­pened with the frost in Italy.

“Regarding the last 10 days, we haven’t had any par­tic­u­lar prob­lems with the weather con­di­tions in Greece and the gen­eral con­di­tions were good for the cul­ti­va­tion almost all over Greece,” Kostas Liris, a strate­gic con­sul­tant for the agri-food indus­try and NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition panel leader, told Olive Oil Times.

“We have had minor prob­lems between March 23 to 26, with tem­per­a­tures drop­ping below zero in sev­eral places,” he added. ​“We even had snow in the east­ern islands of the Aegean Sea, but that lasted for a few hours, so it did­n’t affect the gen­eral con­di­tion of the olive trees or other cul­ti­va­tion.”

“A few small pro­duc­ers in spe­cific areas have now reported some icy nights and a few hail events, but those did not affect the crops as a whole,” Liris con­tin­ued. ​“At the moment, the gen­eral cli­mate con­di­tions seem favor­able, and these events will not affect pro­duc­tion.”

For Liris, the water short­age fac­ing the Mediterranean basin will pose a much larger prob­lem for Greek pro­duc­ers in the cur­rent crop year.

However, farm­ers in France have not been so lucky. Serious dam­age has been reported across the wine-soaked south of the coun­try, where tem­per­a­tures dropped as low as –6 ºC.

According to WineMag, much of the dam­age caused to the cur­rent grape crop is due to above the aver­age tem­per­a­tures recorded in March fol­lowed by the freez­ing April days.

All main wine pro­duc­tion areas, which include the most pro­duc­tive olive grow­ing regions in the coun­try, were ham­mered by the freeze. Grape pro­duc­tion is expected to decrease by 50 to 100 per­cent in some areas.

However, Alexandra Paris, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and eco­nom­ics direc­tor at France Olive, told Olive Oil Times that it is still too early to deter­mine how these adverse weather events will impact olive grow­ers.

“The effects of frost are still dif­fi­cult to pin­point on olive trees,” she said. ​“The flo­ral shoots were more or less advanced depend­ing on the ter­ri­tory, but the flow­ers are not there yet. We should know more within 15 days to three weeks.”

• Coldiretti
• Agrotypos
• Wine Mag