The food system is the most vulnerable. Lilian Guzmán, a farmer just outside Berlin, said the drought had led to a “total failure” of her rapeseed crop and left her and her employees wishing for rain as the harvest edged closer.
“It was a huge stress,” said Guzmán, who like Goebel has sandy soils that struggle to hold water. “We were watching from the window like children waiting for the first snow.”
Adam Beer, an organic farmer in south-west England, said he hadn’t seen proper rain for months when he planted cabbages and cauliflowers in the wake of the heatwave that scorched
Europe in early July. He made sure to irrigate his field once before and twice after placing the four-inch shoots in the frail soil.
But within a week, he said, the young green plants had turned “either completely invisible, or so dry you could crumble them into dust.”
Beer had expected to lose half the crop to the hot and dry weather but instead found 95% had been wiped out. “Your heart just drops,” he said. “It’s devastating.”
From the UK, which saw its driest spring in over a century, all the way through to Ukraine, a breadbasket facing desertification, the lack of water has also caused pain across lesser-known parts of the European economy.
“It is indeed stressful,” said Martin Staats, president of the German inland shipping association. Low water levels were restricting movement and stopping companies from loading their ships full of cargo, he said. In the driest periods, ships have been forced to sit idly in harbours.
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