REPORTING. In Pas-de-Calais, farmers chilled by the frost, after the floods which soaked the fields

“They were only missing that.” When he discovered the weather forecast for the week, Benoît-Joseph Berteloot looked grim. This market gardener has already lost his entire production and stock of vegetables in the floods of November and January. In Clairmarais (Pas-de-Calais), an hour before the visit of the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, Tuesday January 9, he confides his despondency in the face of winter frost, while water is still invading the houses. “Today, normally, I should be on a tractor plowinghe explains. But there’s nothing we can do.”

Water has once again swallowed up winter crops. “We hadn’t finished harvesting and then there are winter vegetables remaining in the field…”explains Benoît-Joseph Berteloot. It’s all lost.”. He estimates the losses of parsnips, leeks, celery root, carrots and cabbage during the first episode of precipitation at 500,000 euros. Since then, he didn’t have much left, or just a “little in the fridges”. But water entered and destroyed its stocks.

The frost will in turn cause damage, continues the farmer, pointing to his equipment, parked further away, with the wheels in the water.. “We didn’t have time to put the machines in antifreeze mode. If water got into the casings [les protections qui enveloppent les pièces mécaniques] or the pipes, she’s trapped and it explodes.”

“The freeze, for infrastructure, will be a sanction. Already, during the first flood, I had more or less come to terms with the idea that the year 2024 was over…”

Benoît-Joseph Berteloot, market gardener in Clairmarais

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To make matters worse, this organic market gardener will also have to start his specifications from scratch, after this double flood. “It will be necessary to carry out analyzes of the soil before putting it back into cultivationhe explains. We will mainly look for phytosanitary pollution, rather than hydrocarbon pollution, because runoff water may have been brought in from other farms.” in conventional agriculture. The operator also had to be rehoused, like many inhabitants of this sector located in the marshes, whose survival depends on dikes and pumping.

Harvests delayed by floods and exposed to frost

A few kilometers away, in Tilques, Antoine Helleboid is trying to save what can still be saved, after months of record rainfall. “It has fallen 650 mm since October 1he explains while consulting his weather application, while the average here is 700 mm per year”. You don’t need to be a great specialist to understand that floors look like sponges. “The water has seeped into the cabbage leaves, which have become moldy and for which I have 10% or 15% losses”figures the market gardener. A little further away, in a large blue bin, Hungarian Blue pumpkins are both rotten and frozen. “Normally, I can harvest them until May”laments the farmer.

Due to repeated floods, farmers have also had to postpone their harvests. From November, “the ground was far too greasy and the tractor only loaded dirt”, remembers Antoine Helleboid. Still in the ground, the vegetables are now exposed to frost, common at this time of year. The market gardener tried as hard as he could to recover his carrots: “We tried to do it manually, but it wasn’t effective. It took three or four times as long.”

“It’s normal for it to freeze. Except that this happens when we haven’t been able to harvest the crops because of the waterlogged land.”

Antoine Helleboid, market gardener in Tilques

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Due to these chain of calamities, the market gardener is already anticipating drops in yield next summer, because the wheat which had to be resown did not “not the same potential”. “Come what may”he concludes, fatalistically.

Outside, the thermometer reads -4°C. In the fortunately heated cabin of his tractor, Quentin Joly, agricultural employee on the family farm, continues winter plowing. “The land is too hard and is starting to become a little impassable”, he observes. The combined effects of the large amount of water absorbed and now the freezing. “Normally, after such a flood, the land is not passable for at least three weeks”, he anticipates. The young man must interrupt his work. “There, if the plow doesn’t want to go down, I’m going to have to stop. Otherwise I’m going to break it.”

“It rained a lot and now there is frost, too much all at once.”

Quentin Joly, agricultural employee

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The past week has been difficult on the 115 hectare farm, located between Delettes and Coyecques. The flood rose to 45 centimeters in the house, and 90 centimeters in the sheds. It was necessary to move all the animals, which were up to their bellies in water. “That’s when I caught a coldexplains Quentin Joly, after yet another coughing fit. My boots were full and my feet were cold. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Waders yet.”, named after the brand of a waterproof outfit with straps popular with his colleagues in recent weeks. Friends also helped him pump his cellar, but the water has already returned, due to an overflow in the nearby spring.

Fields washed away by floods

Quentin Joly watches the weather with “a lot of apprehension”, especially since the flood season is not over. The surrounding lands “already ‘beat’ easily, which means they become smooth as soon as it rains a littleexposes the agricultural employee. When the fields are flat, we have a whole bed of stones and earth which is deposited, carried by the running water. And on the rolling fields, the floods dig ditches.” Above all, floods wash the soil, removing the best soil, arable, light as silt.

In November, a support fund of 5,000 euros per farm was announced for breeders. For his first trip as head of government, Gabriel Attal promised a reinforced emergency fund for farmers and market gardeners, with an increase in the aid ceiling of up to 20,000 euros.

The agricultural world is often singled out for having removed hedges during consolidation, thus facilitating the surge of water on the fields. The farmers we met blame the local and national public authorities, accusing them of not sufficiently maintaining the waterworks, the vast drainage network dating back several centuries. A handful of them went to clean a canal in Boulogne-sur-Mer on Monday, during a symbolic action.