Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, Aug. 23, 2024 (Lusa) - 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, told 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 don't have agricultural insurance in place,’ he explained.
The leader stressed that ‘there is no reason why this should not happen’ and indicated that there was damage to sweet potato, potato, cabbage, watermelon, cantaloupe melon, pepper, pumpkin, hemp and sweetcorn, among other crops.
On farms there is damage to these crops of up to 70% and it is not greater because some were already halfway through the harvest.
'There are others that were a third of the way through their planting and have lost it. On those that were still a month away from harvest, they managed to pick up between 25% and 30% of the production,’ he said.
According to Manuel Ledo, the drought scenario is exacerbated by the fact that producers don't have an agricultural irrigation system, and their water comes from the municipal public network, which ‘is causing huge losses’.
The association wants the Regional Institute for Agrarian Planning (IROA) to ‘also distribute water not only for livestock, but also for agriculture’, so that producers can protect themselves with tanks or ponds.
Manuel Ledo suggested making better use of the water from the streams that flow into the sea, distributing it to agriculture.
The Azores have been under a yellow weather warning for several days this month (the least serious on a scale of three) due to the hot weather, with maximum temperatures of 29 and 30ºC and minimum temperatures between 21 and 23ºC, 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 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’.
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