The large amounts of rain last week will cost the farmers money and has caused a lot of distress: Some cultures in Fricktal are completely flooded, and of other cultures the damage still has to be estimated.
Charlotte Brogli who runs Widmatthof in Zeiningen together with her husband, has no certainty that their crop is undamaged. She says: "We cannot judge the situation accurately." Our wheat looks all right now. How the strawberries will cope is unclear. "Strawberries are very delicate, especially in the mature stage, if it is too wet, they begin to rot."
10000 CHF damage
Bernhard Weiss, a farmer from Laufenburg has to reckon with substantial damages. All planted spinach is completely spoiled. The roots were flooded for too long and therefore suffocated. He explains: "They say that after 48 hours under water the plant can’t recover from the lack of oxygen." He has lost two hectares of spinach. "That is a loss of 10000 franc." There will be no crop at all. "At first we thought we could save about half of the crop but everything is yellow now."
Otherwise Bernhard Weiss has had a lucky escape, the potato crop will lose just a few rows. The sugar beets suffer from snails "but we can’t blame the rain for that." However, it is only the beginning of the year Bernhard Weiss says: "nothing else may go wrong now."
Source: www.oltnertagblatt.ch
By Nadine Pfeifer