“We have to study the weather more, it is driving us crazy,” exclaims Sonia Torres, director of Ecofeixes. No wonder. Farmers say that this year hit “the limit, very extreme”. They do not know where they stand. The weather and heat has destroyed all their plans. For example, they have just harvested chard that should not have been ready until January. In other words, they have arrived at the market a month and a half early. And they have harvested cauliflowers three weeks earlier than usual due to the heat, Torres calculates. Crazy.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to plan our crops. For example, summer is late. This year it arrived late after the persistent rains during the whole month of March, which prevented us from sowing. There are too many changes in the climate,” explains the head of Ecofeixes, where they already have the planning for 2023 ready. Whether or not it will be accomplished is another thing: “Planting begins in February, almost weekly. The seedlings, which we have just ordered, will arrive whether it rains or not, whether it is hot or not. What if what happened last March happens again? This is the farmer’s biggest fear.
In 2022 “everything happened”: they sowed potatoes “super late; onions, too, and they did not grow as they should”. And the heat has lasted until now, so that the chard, cauliflower and broccoli, “planned to arrive in stages, have matured all at once”. Suddenly they have everything at once: “And on top of that,” Torres says, “we had four days of wind in which the normal thing to do, so as not to affect the leaves, is to harvest everything and sell it. But since everything arrived all at once, it meant harvesting a ton of chard at the same time. To make matters worse, the wind “gleaned the cauliflowers (they turned pink) and the broccoli”.
The heat has lasted until now, so the chard, cauliflowers and broccoli, “planned to arrive in stages, have matured all at once”. Suddenly they have everything all at once
They plant a first batch of chard in September, calculating that they will be ready “in two or three weeks, because it is still warm and there is adequate humidity. They usually shoot up quickly, super fast”. Those planted later, in October, should theoretically “slow down their growth due to the cold, so that they take five or six weeks to grow”. And the ones planted in November should not be ready until January, because it is even colder, so they do not grow as fast: “But the ones we planted in October and November matured in only two weeks due to the heat, like the September ones. All the sowings came at the same time”. Instead of staggered, they arrived all at once.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.