France In Crisis As Drought Deepens - Minister

Gerard Bon, Marie Maitre and Sybille de La Hamaide PlanetArk 17 May 11;

France has imposed limits on water consumption in 28 of its 96 administrative departments, the environment ministry said Monday, amid signs that a prolonged dry spell that has hit grain crops would continue.

"We are already in a situation of crisis. The situation is like what we would expect in July for groundwater levels, river flows and snow melting," Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told a press conference.

The government had previously put 27 departments under water consumption limits, and Kosciusko-Morizet said Monday that similar measures could be extended to three more -- effectively affecting a third of the country.

One of the hottest and driest Aprils on record in France has parched farmland and cut water reserves, stoking worries of a drought similar to that experienced in 1976 and fuelling concern harvests will suffer in the European Union's top grain producer.

No substantial rainfall is expected in the next two weeks, weather expert Michele Blanchard told Monday's press conference.

In an interview with Reuters Insider, Meteo France forecaster Michel Daloz said that temperatures would also rise sharply in the next week, boosting groundwater evaporation.

"It would really need a miracle, which is three weeks of heavy rain after the coming 8-10 days (of a dry spell), to hope to make up for some of the deficit," Daloz said.

Total rainfall in April amounted to barely 29 percent of the average established over the 1971-2000 period, the ministry said in a report, adding that soils in the northern part of the country were experiencing the driest conditions in 50 years.

"Rainfalls in coming weeks will be crucial," Kosciusko-Morizet said, adding that a wet month of July alone would not be enough to turn the situation around.

"From a weather point of view the month of June is the last chance of rain. After that, it's summertime and all of France is dry, even the showers that fall in July and August don't bring much water," Daloz said.

Two thirds of French groundwater reserves were down year on year in April, while the remaining 34 percent were stable or up.

France has lost any prospect of a very good wheat crop this year as the lack of water hit plants at an advanced development stage, but the French farm office said last week it was too early to translate drought-related worries into yield loss numbers.

Last week, French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire called on the European Union to ease some environmental requirements in light of measures the French government wants to take to help animal breeders, hurt by surging grain prices.

Drought concerns in several countries in Europe, including Germany and Poland, combined with weather worries in other key producing regions such as the United States, have lent support to grain markets, helping them soften the blow of a recent global commodity sell-off sparked by economic growth concerns.

(Editing by Anthony Barker)

Little Rain For Europe's Farmers Before June
Daniel Fineren PlanetArk 18 May 11;

Drought in much of Europe looks set to continue with little relief for parched farmland until June at the earliest, forecasters say.

Parts of central Europe saw less than 40 percent of their long-term average rainfall from February to April, with even the wettest seeing less than 80 percent of the mean for 1951-2000, according to the Global Precipitation Climatology Center.

At the start of May, some weather watchers saw some rainfall relief by the end of the month from the long, dry spell that has desiccated large parts of Europe since January.

Patchy rain has moistened bits of northern Britain, France and Germany over the last few days, raising Rhine river levels and allowing some increase in trade.

But dry high pressure systems have not made way for wetter lows as had been expected, preventing sustained rain from soaking dusty fields in the three biggest wheat growing areas of the EU, and prompting France to impose limits on water use on fears the drought will continue

"Most of the really dry conditions are expected to be across southern France and Germany, with near or slightly below normal rainfall in northern sections, where most of the wheat is," Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at U.S.-based Weather Services International, said Monday.

"So, no drought-busting rains expected for most of the rest of May."

Telvent DTN, a U.S.-based energy and commodities weather forecaster, said it expected only a few scattered light rain showers in the grain producing heartland of the EU, which it warned would not compensate for months of dry weather.

"More rain is needed to support developing wheat in much of France and Germany," Telvent said Monday.

Benchmark European wheat futures have risen about 11.5 percent since May 5, bouncing back from a cross-commodity sell off in late April on the dry weather.

The stubborn high pressure systems that tend to bring dry weather to continental Europe show little sign of being pushed aside by typically-wetter lows, except in northern areas where grain production is low, according to the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF - see link below).

"Looking at southern Britain as the main grain area I think rainfall amounts are really uncertain," a spokesman for Britain's official forecaster, the Met Office, said.

"There is more rain in the forecast. However, I think the bulk of that rain is likely to be in more northern parts... It remains stubbornly dry in eastern and south eastern parts."

The Met Office sees potential thunder storms in southern England next week but because the earth is so dry, heavy rain could race off the rock-hard agricultural land into rivers.

RUSSIA RAINS

The unusually dry spring in top EU wheat producers France, Germany and Britain has revived drought fears after a dry summer in 2010 ravaged Russian and Ukrainian wheat harvests -- driving a surge in food prices around the world.

Recent rains should help cereal growth in western Ukraine and southern Russia. But drier weather over the next 7-10 days still appears likely for crop areas from the eastern Central and Volga regions into the Newlands region, Telvent said in its World Commodities Weather Spotlight.

"This favors spring wheat planting but will reduce soil moisture for winter crops," the outlook said.

"This is the same area that was hit by severe drought last season and thus this drying trend will bear watching."

ENERGY MARKET PRESSURE

Unless low pressure in the North Atlantic can push aside high pressure systems, the drought could also put more bullish pressure on European energy markets.

"Recent high temperatures and low rainfall across Europe have resulted in low hydro-electric reservoir levels across the continent," Mark Lewis, director of commodities research at Deutsche Bank said.

Switzerland's reservoir levels dropped again in early May, further delaying the usual spring turning point when levels start going up as snow melts.

Swiss reserves are usually a key summer source of clean electricity. But with German nuclear power production hobbled by Berlin's reaction to Japan's nuclear crisis, a continued drought could also drive up EU carbon emissions prices as generators are forced to burn more coal.

A long heatwave forced several German and French nuclear plants to shut in summer 2003 because of river water cooling problems, and while temperatures so far have not been as extreme, low river levels are a growing concern.

Spain, which also relies on hydro power, has seen its reserves shrink about 3 percent from a year ago but rainfall on western parts of the Iberian Peninsula has not been as badly affected.