Spanish farmers on drought alert

February is barely past but already Spanish farmers are on drought alert as reservoirs shrink, crops wilt and brush fires crackle after the country’s driest winter in 70 years.

Spain is used to fires in the summer, but this year they have come early, ravaging woodland, while the general dryness stunts crops and leaves farm animals without grass for grazing.

Brush fires have already swept across 400 hectares in the wooded northwestern region of Galicia. Near the Galician village of Brocos, the Portodemouros reservoir has visibly shrunk and egg-shell cracks have appeared in the mud.

“We have a very hard drought, spectacularly intense in some territories,” said agriculture minister Miguel Aras Canete. “The water reserves are not at alarming levels, but we are beginning to have a lot of forest fires.”

Spaniards emerged from their usual choking summer last year gasping for rain, but over the past three winter months Spain has had average precipitation of just 55 litres per square metre, far below the average of 200 litres.

“We have experienced three winter months with minimal levels of rain in all of Spain — December, January and February have been the driest since at least the 1940s,” state weather service spokesman Angel Rivera told AFP.

“Previously the driest winter had been in 1980-81,” Rivera said. “Then it rained 30 litres more per square metre than it is now.”

The latest official drought report on February 22 said Spain’s reservoirs were only two-thirds full, meaning less water for the fields where crops grow and animals graze.

“Leafy plants, vegetables and cereals are suffering the most,” said Gregorio Juarez, a spokesman for the young farmer’s association, ASAJA, warning that olives, vines and almonds may be next. “There is a large part of southern Andalucia and Aragon where there is land that has already been lost, where there is now no solution whether it rains or not.”