Turns out CO2 not so good for plants, or the people that plant them.
Greece’s agricultural heartland is under water — and recovery will take a long time.
Athens is asking Brussels for aid after a violent storm brought record rainfall last week, turning the Thessalian plain — home to a quarter of the country’s agricultural production — into a vast lake.
“We’ve had the worst floods in our history. This is probably one of the most powerful storms to ever hit Europe,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said after meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
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The region of Thessaly saw more than a year’s worth of rainfall in 48 hours, inundating the fertile plain at its center. According to the EU’s Copernicus monitoring service, some 73,000 hectares — an area nearly as large as New York City — are under water.With the plain accounting for 25 percent of Greece’s agricultural production, the threat of shortages and price hikes now looms large.
About a quarter of Greece’s wheat and barley is grown there, as well as more than 30 percent of its cotton, a third of chickpeas, lentils and pistachios, a fifth of the hay used in livestock farming as well as half the industrial tomato production.
Experts warn that with silt and mud settling across fields, the flooding could affect soil quality for years to come. Efthymios Lekkas, a disaster management expert, told state television that it would take at least five years for the plain to become fertile again.
71% of farmers say that climate change already has a large impact on their farm, and even more are worried about the impact this will have in the future. 73% have experienced increasing pest and disease pressure. On average farmers estimate that their incomes had reduced by 15.7% due to climate change in the past two years. One in six farmers even identifies income losses of over 25% during this period.
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To conduct the ‘Farmer Voice’, life science company Bayer commissioned an agency to independently interview 800 farmers globally, representing farms large and small from Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Kenya, Ukraine, and the United States in equal numbers.
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Farmers are taking steps to mitigate climate change and value innovation More than 80% of surveyed farmers are already taking or planning to take steps to directly apply measures to reduce greenhouse gases. The top focus areas are using cover crops (43% do so already or intend to do so), using renewable energy or biofuels (37%) and using innovative seeds to reduce fertilizer or crop protection use (33%). Alongside this, every farmer claims to already apply or plans to apply measures to help biodiversity. Over half (54%) say they already apply measures to protect insects, such as insect hotels, or plan to do so in the next three years