How dry winter is spelling trouble for fruit production

The uncharacteristically dry and warm winter Malta is currently experiencing will have implications on the harvest of summer fruits, farmers at the Farmers Market in Ta’ Qali told MaltaToday.

“The heat has resulted in very high yields for some crops relatively early this year, but we will definitely feel the effects of this dry weather during the summer months,” Farmers Market president Anna Zahra told MaltaToday.

“The warm winter has eased and hastened the growth of vegetables like marrows, cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbages, so that there are currently a lot of them available on the market, making prices much cheaper than usual,” Zahra said, adding that alternately, cold-loving vegetables like artichokes had had a very bad season.

Cauliflowers are among the crops enjoying a particularly strong season

Zahra’s comments were echoed by all the farmers who spoke to the newsroom, with Stephen Bartolo adding that the weather had been beneficial for consumers, given that it provided them with cheaper products.

So far so good, you might think, but as the farmers explained, the dry weather will also have a negative impact on summer fruits, because the land is not hydrated enough.

“Fruits like peaches, apricots, pears, June pears (bambinella) and grapes will all suffer because of the dry winter we’re having,” John Borg said

“Trees cannot store water, and the small amount of rain we had this year did not go deep enough for the roots to benefit,” he said, adding that the warmth had also meant that trees did not go through the period of rest they require in order for the fruits to grow. Borg explained that cold temperatures cause trees to go through hibernation, which is necessary to ensure better fruit production as temperatures get warmer.

Adding plums to the list of fruits consumers might miss in the summer months, Gorg Agius added that the trees in question might not even have enough energy to grow flowers, let alone fruit.

“If they actually grow, they will be very sparse and the fruit will probably be very small,” he said.

Farmers told the newsroom that artichokes suffered something of a bad season because they thrive in lower temperatures.

Zahra stressed that although most farmers had irrigation systems to counter the dryness, rainwater generally reached deeper underground than irrigation systems could.

“I expect even fruits like melons and watermelons to become scarce this summer because there is not enough water stored underground.”

According to Jane Zammit, the dryness will also affect other crops like tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, because they normally require constant hydration.

Farmers also pointed out that the excessive use of ground water for crop irrigation this winter, might eventually create its own problems.

“The quality of the water available has already changed, with it becoming increasingly saline already. We can only imagine how much more saline it will get once demand rises drastically in the summer months,” Stephen Bartolo said, adding that as a result crops that are affected by salinity will be highly influenced.

Strawberries are among the fruits enjoying something of an early season

“Leafy vegetables like spinach and lettuce are very easily affected by salinity levels for instance,” Bartolo said.

Bartolo also highlighted a common issue for the farmers this year; the dry weather has also meant that their costs rise given the necessary irrigation. In fact, a number of farmers said that despite the high yields this year, the excessive costs of irrigation meant that the effort was almost “not worth it” for farmers.

“The warmth also meant that there were no natural inhibitors, and that all farmers had something close to a 100% success rate, which in itself might not sound like a bad thing, but it ultimately means we end up selling products at an excessively low price in order to remain competitive,” Zammit said.

While highlighting that the warm winter was not the only issue faced by farmers, particularly with the advent of big supermarkets, Agius said that he hoped farmers would receive some sort of compensation or subsidies for the losses that farmers had to shoulder due to the weather.