Winegrowers and cereal growers are suffering from poor harvests this year, but they are not the only ones to have suffered from excessive rain in recent months.
Where have the years gone? “normal” ? After battling drought in 2022 and 2023, French farmers had to adapt to particularly rainy conditions in the spring and also, for the northern half of France, this summer. As the grape harvest has started for winegrowers, summer fruits and vegetables are living their last moments on the stalls and cereal growers are preparing for autumn sowing, the sector is taking stock of a complicated year.
The early summer harvests have revived among cereal growers the bad memories of the last crisis encountered by the sector, in 2016. “At the time, everyone was worried,” remembers Eric Thirouin, president of the General Association of Wheat Producers (AGPB) and president of the Eure-et-Loir Chamber of Agriculture“This year, my colleagues are not telling me they are worried. They are telling me: ‘We feel like throwing in the towel’.” Excessive spring rains and late planting resulted in a yield per hectare “down 17% on soft wheat compared to the previous year, he explains, and not far from double for organic farming” whose yields are lower. “On wheat, barley and rapeseed, I got half the yield”noted Jean-Bernard Lozier, an organic cereal grower in Eure, at the beginning of August.
Because this wet weather has encouraged unwanted weeds to grow among the cereals. “In June, me“On the TGV, we could see the weeds growing above the wheat fields,” recalls Eric Thirouin. Faced with this direct consequence of “climatic hazard”, he deplores “the gradual disappearance over the last ten years of means of crop protection” by virtue of the fight against phytosanitary products, implicated in the decline of certain ecosystems.
Conversely, his colleague from the Peasant Confederation assured thatto have limited “at most” the inputs had made it possible to limit costs and therefore the damage to cash flow. “I have colleagues in conventional agriculture who have used more phytosanitary products to protect their crops, because the weather was bad, which are already saying that it will be a blank year for them,” noted Jean-Bernard Lozier.
Excess water during the harvest period, problem of access to the fields… “IL There were times when tractors could not even enter the fields without risking getting stuck or bogged down, which could delay intervention periods.”adds Eric Thirouin. For agroclimatologist Serge Zaka, the situation is not uniform. “It’s a black year for wheat and barley, but there are differences between regions and nuances to be made depending on the crops, he emphasizes. Corn, sunflower and sorghum, for example, are doing quite well. The damage to overall agricultural production is less than during the widespread drought we have experienced in recent years.”the expert continues.
The fields and meadows charred in 2022 have, in places, experienced problems of a completely different nature. “It was also complicated for the pasture,” abounds Jean-Christophe Richard, president of the Loire-Atlantique Peasant Confederation and dairy farmer. “We had to go back animals so as not to damage the meadows. At a time when, normally, grain silos are closed so that the cows can move onto grass, they had to be reopened.”he continues, adding that the lack of sunshine has affected the quality of this grass, which provides cows the sugars they need, with consequences on their milk production. The farmer therefore expects a 20% drop in his production.
“He has We also had to find the weather window to make hay, for the harvests, etc. We brought in bales that weren’t completely dry. Everything was complicated,” he sums up, certain of having to buy straw to compensate for the loss of fodder.
Across France as a whole, wine production is expected to decline by 18% this year over a year, and 11% lower than the 2019-2023 average, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Here again, climatic hazards are the culprit. In the Jura vineyards, production has collapsed by 71% in one year. “This is a vintage with extremely low production, the likes of which have rarely been seen,” laments Gaël Delorme, wine advisor to the Jura viticulture society and the Chamber of Agriculture. After a night of frost sealed the fate of a large part of the vineyard, on the night of April 22, “We had a lot of rain until July, which led to diseases, particularly mildew, and made managing the vines very difficult,” he explains.
Mildew is “twice as many working hours, twice as many treatments, twice as many costs, with teams called out at night and on weekends,” detailed Stéphane Gabard, the president of the ODG Bordeaux rouge, the main appellation of the Bordeaux vineyard, to AFP at the beginning of August.
At the start of the harvest, Gaël Delorme therefore salutes “the work and self-sacrifice of the winegrowers who did not give up in trying conditions.” Because the years follow one another and are not alike. “The issues are always different, which poses enormous challenges in terms of adaptation to climate change,” he adds.
So, several hundred kilometers away, in the Gard, Nicolas Richarme is also surprised “of the volumes of water that fell, the frequency of the showers… We were not used to that. These are conditions that are rather expected in the Pays de la Loire or in the Bordeaux region, notes the winemaker, president of the SudVinBio interprofessional organization, which covers the whole of Occitanie. But they too experienced conditions they were not used to.”
“Every year, we face something new. An excess, in one direction or the other. A drought or too much water. Before, we were talking about one complicated year for five ‘normal’ years. Today, it’s almost the opposite.”
Nicolas Richarme, winemaker in the Gardto franceinfo
Occitania alone has experienced both extremes: “The drought continues in Roussillon and Aude, where colleagues have not seen a drop of water. And in the Gard, the excess water has affected the harvest. These calamities brought about by climate change are not taken into account by insurance in the same way as hail or frost, even though they penalize us,” he laments.
“Farmers are making huge efforts to cope with climatic hazards. But it is difficult to adapt to both drought and excess water,” says agroclimatologist Serge Zaka. If technical solutions exist – “such as irrigation for water deficit, and drainage when there is excess water” –, part of the adaptation to these hazards is played out in the soil. “Living soils, with plant cover, soil that holds together… It’s the only way we have to respond to excess and deficits of water. This can save two weeks,” reports the specialist. “It’s not magic, especially when it rains really too much, but it can make a difference,” adds Serge Zaka, while farmers spent weeks with their boots in several centimetres of water, as in the English Channel, describes France Bleu Cotentin.
For Vincent Levavasseur, a market gardener on living soil not far from there, in Orne, the fact of not being dependent The work operations made it possible to avoid delays at the critical time of cultivation in May, when the region received “double the usual rainfall”. “The soil that retains water well is more supportive, so you can walk without being in the mud”, he sums up. However, in this region where summer vegetables are mainly grown in greenhouses, “we had more difficulty in starting the season and getting out the tomatoes, cucumbers, melons… Summer vegetables have had difficulty arriving”he concedes, pointing out among other things the lack of sunshine, pollination problems and of course, diseases. “Agricultural production is becoming less and less serene and more and more difficult to anticipate”, concludes Serge Zaka.