France: Crop damage has yet to be assessed

The heavy rainfall that began on Monday in the South East of France ended on Wednesday morning, but the Saone-et-Loire region still remains under the “alerte orange” warning. A 32 year old woman died in a landslide caused by the rain near Nice. According to the ERDF 6,000 homes in the Ardèche region had no electricity on Tuesday. Two campsites near Avignon were evacuated by the fire department on Tuesday night. Parts of some railway routes were cancelled and Nice airport was at a standstill for two hours. The rain has now stopped, but in the Ardèche rainfall was measured at 400 litres/m2.

A fruit producer in the Rhone-Alpes expressed their relief that they had no field production growing at the moment, although the hail they had only three weeks ago hugely damaged their kiwi production.

On one farm in the Saone-et-Loire, the producer says that they were not overly effected by the rainfall as they are on a hill, however the rain makes it, “difficult for working the land and harvesting”. They are currently harvesting cabbage, but as much of their land is on top of a layer of clay they are used to working on water clogged soil. They laugh saying that when it rains “we just buy boots!”.

Crop damage has yet to be assessed, but the good weather now expected in France will help the clean up operations and today’s sun will begin to dry out the soil.