The Terra Verde Association, in the Azores, is calculating the impact of the drought on agricultural production, which is up to 70% in some crops, to hand over to the regional government, the organisation’s president, Manuel Ledo, tells Lusa.

“At the beginning of the week, Terra Verde began to survey the damage caused and that will be caused, making an estimate to present to the Regional Government, since unfortunately we still do not have agricultural insurance in place”, he explained.

Mr Ledo stressed that “there is no reason why this should not happen” and indicated that there was damage of up to 70% to crops of sweet potato, potato, cabbage, watermelon, cantaloupe melon, pepper, pumpkin, hemp and sweetcorn, among other crops. Damage is only not greater because some of the crops were already halfway through their growth cycle.

According to Manuel Ledo, this year’s drought scenario has been exacerbated by the fact that producers do not have an agricultural irrigation system. Their water comes from the municipal public network, which ‘is causing huge (financial) losses’.

The association wants the Regional Institute for Agrarian Planning (IROA) to start distributing water “not only for livestock, but also for agriculture”, so that producers can protect themselves with tanks and/ or ponds.

Manuel Ledo also suggested “making better use of the water from streams that flow into the sea”, distributing it to agriculture.

The Azores, more traditionally a region visited by plentiful rains, started experiencing periods of drought a few years pre-2020. The island chain has been under a yellow weather warning for several days this month due to hot weather – with maximum temperatures of 29 and 30ºC and minimum temperatures between 21 and 23ºC, again, very unusual for the nine islands.

This week, the Federation of Firefighters of the Autonomous Region of the Azores asked residents of the archipelago to “exercise the utmost caution with bonfires” due to the risk of rural fires, which (again) are not common in the region.

Terra Verde – Associação de Produtores Agrícolas do Açores, based on the island of São Miguel, was founded in 2012 with the aim of “defending and safeguarding the rights and interests of agricultural producers, being an active voice with political decision-makers”.

Source - https://www.portugalresident.com