Rastislav Pucovski held a fistful of soybeans shriveled to the size of peppercorns on his farmland in northern Serbia where the soil, dried to dust by drought, swirled in the wind.
A brief rain shower, the first in more than 40 days, offered no relief. The surrounding fields, near the town of Backi Petrovac, remained parched, the corn and soy crops withered.
“Everything is bone dry,” said Pucovski, 48, as he surveilled his land this week. “I don’t know how we will sell it.”
Photo: Reuters
Serbia, like much of the Balkans, experienced its hottest summer on record, fueled by repeated heat waves that pushed temperatures above 40oC.
The heat, coupled with drought, has strained the region’s fragile power grid, reduced key water reserves and led to crop failures. It has also raised concerns about creeping climate change, including erratic rainfall and higher temperatures that much of southern Europe is already experiencing.
Balkan wine growers say they could be rare winners, because the hot weather has boosted the sugar content in their grapes. However, corn, soy, sunflowers and some vegetables can be devastated, farmers said.
Agriculture accounts for about 6 percent of Serbia’s GDP. Preliminary data by producers suggest Serbian corn yields might drop by about 20 percent.
One problem is water access. Serbia, which has historically enjoyed plenty of rain, only irrigates 1.4 percent of its agricultural land, Statistics Office data show.
Hundreds of millions of euros would be needed for it to reach the global average of 17 percent of farmland under irrigation, Belgrade-based agricultural analyst Branislav Gulan said.
He expects farming revenue losses this year of about 500 million euros (US$554 million) because of drought.
In Bosnia, drought might halve the corn yield to 4.5 to 5 tonnes per hectare, said Dragan Mandic, an expert at the Agricultural Institute of Bosnia’s Serb Republic.
Dejan Jovanovic, a farmer from the Bijeljina region, said his crops “were devastated.”
“The corn leaves are paper-white and crumbly, the grains are tiny,” he said.
The hot weather has drastically altered the grape harvest in the Balkans this year. Producers have been forced to pick grapes earlier than anyone can remember.
Some harvests will be smaller, but the quality will be better, producers said.
In Croatia’s eastern Ilok region, the headlights of grape harvesting machines pierce the dark lanes between vines. Wine makers have started picking at night because the grapes begin fermenting too fast when picked in the heat of the day.
“It’s better to harvest at night, because it is not so hot,” said Darko Sili, a machine driver.
This year’s harvest will be nearly a month earlier than usual and could be up to 30 percent smaller due to the heat, said Vesna Stajner, a spokeswoman for the Ilocki Podrumi winery.
In Kosovo, picking began this month, also a month earlier than last year. Owners said they scrambled to find pickers so early in the season.
Dozens of workers gathered at dawn in the vineyard of the Stone Castle winery near the southern town of Rahovec.
“Our great grandparents cannot remember grapes being harvested so early,” said Nebi Duraj, grape production coordinator at Stone Castle.
There is an upside.
“It is like eating sugar,” a worker in his 60s said, as he filled his mouth with white grapes.
Duraj said the wine quality would be better than ever this year because of the sweetness, which turns to alcohol.
“When you look for wine in the coming years, ask for the 2024 vintage,” he said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS