Experiences of drought

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1:18Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we hear personal experiences from the US, Europe and India of drought. It's been several weeks since there was any significant rainfall in many parts of the world. Here in southern England it has been the driest July since records began almost 200 years ago. Just looking out the window here in central London you can see blue skies but also if you walk around yellow and dusty parks with some trees turning brown. Across Europe, a prolonged heatwave and little rain has dried up waterways, hit crop production and has contributed to the wildfires that continue to burn in many areas.

2:07For our first conversation, my colleague Rahul Tandon brought together three farmers. We'll hear in a moment from Gurpete in India, who farms in northern Rajasthan. First, Matteo, who has a mixed farm in Nantes in western France and Heather whose farm is in the English countryside of Lincolnshire sometimes considered the breadbasket of the UK. We're Arab and beef farmers and over the last couple of years we've seen quite a decrease in rainfall this year to give an example between the 1st of March and when the combines went in historically early about 10 days two weeks ago we'd had 67 mil of rain that's probably a third we'd see about 200 to 250 in that same time frame so our yields have been really knocked back by the reduction in rainfall what's it like in france i've been a farmer for 15 years and this is the worst drought i have ever seen i must say we had four heat waves and for several days temperature reached more than 40 degrees more than 40 degrees which is the first time in my region.

3:16And because of the heat, my milk production dropped by about 25%. Fortunately, all my cows survived. But the yield from my grassland has been very badly affected. In a normal year, my cows graze from March until July. But this year, I had to stop grazing in May because the grass was already dry and yellow. So this is a very, very complicated year. You use the word complicated year, isn't it? I think it's a very difficult year, isn't it, for farmers, from what we've heard from Heather and Matteo there in Europe. Let's bring in Gurpreet in India. I've just come back from India, Gurpreet. It's obviously the monsoon season.

4:01What has that been like for farmers where you are? Are there problems there as well? We were already being warned about El Nino being very severe this year and less rainfall. But what has happened is more than the less rainfall, it is the erratic rainfall which has killed the farmers, to use the word, killed the crops. When we wanted the rainfalls to be there, there were no rains. For stretches as long as 20-25 days, even at the onset of monsoon, there were no rains. and when at the first rain, little drizzles, people started sowing the seeds, then sudden heavy deluges started coming in, which washed away the topsoils.

4:43And that was a double whammy. You know, first you are late in the sowing, you know your yield is going to be affected. And then when heavy rains, it was almost like, you know, buckets being thrown from the sky. And that kind of rain, when it comes, it takes away the topsoil, it takes away your seeds. So it is more of a erratic thing. India, more or less, and Rajasthan, especially the state I come from, the majority part is unirrigated. So it is rain-fed and we depend on rains. So it has been a very difficult year this year. and by the end of this cycle when we come to November and December when yields which we are fearing they will fall down by almost 25 % so imagine in a country of 1.5 billion if food production goes down by anywhere even 15 to 20 % it is going to be a bad scene.

5:36To think about the example of the erratic weather and the reduced rainfall that we were just talking about in India we drilled our spring barley crop in middle of March third fourth week thinking that there was rain on the forecast and that rain never came we are looking at probably with the yields where they're going to be of a loss of a thousand pounds a hectare which isn't something that's sustainable and can't go forward so we have put different things in place on the farm so we've increased cattle numbers we've looked at putting more longer term grass lays in but without having the infrastructure there to be able to manage those crops.

6:12A seed needs water to grow. We've not had that. You've all talked about reduced yields. I mean, you're basically saying that what you do is going to get more difficult to continue. If things don't change, as these temperatures get hotter, if you don't have help, Matteo, can you continue? Or are you sitting there thinking, I can't farm anymore, this isn't a business I can be in anymore? Yeah, that's really the question. And I feel that, you know, I have three little daughters and I get that farm from my father or my grandfather. And I feel very much that it won't be possible in the future to do the same in my region.

6:50Because we have known for many years that climate change will bring more extreme weather. So we have been trying to make our farm more resilient. We keep stock from good years. We have a lot of grassland. We also have planted many hedges to help create better microclimate. But honestly, adapting to climate change is becoming more and more difficult, even for farms that are already quite resilient. And the colleague from India spoke about food security. And that is already a real topic because a billion of people are suffering from hunger. But we feel that it can lead to an extremely dangerous situation.

7:33You know, you expect rain, you sow some seeds, you put some fertilizer in. And most of the Indian families, I would say almost 80 % of Indian families, are one drought away from bankruptcy. It is that scary for us. And we try and do all other things. We have started getting into the millets. We have started doing maize. But after the Indo-American trade deal, you know, a lot of maize and corn and, you know, soybean has started coming from America. So that's a political issue, though. But that is hitting farmers bad. And it is very difficult. You know, some things require water. There is no alternative.

8:14Like suppose we have to do rice. We need water. There is no option to that. And every rice farmer cannot shift to maize or soybean or other places because a lot of climatic factors also come into play. So there is not much of a choice also, especially in the part of India where I am or India as a whole. The question you first raised, are we thinking of doing something else? To be honest, there is nothing else most of the farmers can do. So that's, again, a very scary situation. I would say the same. People think you can look at other things and it's quite easy. So we're traditionally our soil type and the climate suits cereals.

8:51That's what we grow. Historically, we've done it very, very well. But you're also set up in terms of machinery and staff and the local transport network of where that produce will go and the wider infrastructure and what's accepted into the marketplace in the UK is all geared towards that. So it's quite difficult and costly to make that change to go into another crop. And it's very, very risky because there isn't necessarily the flux in the system to financially be able to take such a risk. I thought from all of you here, you know, we have these high temperatures. We've had wildfires, haven't we, in many, many parts of Europe.

9:33Matteo, for you, on a daily basis, what's the biggest problem that the heat is causing you? I would say that it is the milk production which is decreasing. So I sell less milk, which is a very big problem. I also had to sell five cows out of my herd of 70 because I didn't have enough feed for all of them. And I also had to buy some forage, 40 tons of hay, for example. And usually my farm is self-sufficient. So on one hand, we earn less money from milk sales. And on the other hand, we have to spend much more on buying feed. So financially, this will be a very difficult year. Heather, for people who are listening to this, I know we're radio.

10:20Can you describe how your farm looks at the moment? I can. So I was with a friend yesterday, actually. And we were walking the beans, actually, because they're probably about a week, 10 days away from harvest. And looking at the grass and she said, it looks like Spain. just because it's brown and it's dry and there are cracks in the ground that I could probably get my arm down not just my hand it doesn't look how you would imagine a farm in England to normally look on a picture postcard it's brown it's dry it's hot it doesn't look like the UK scientists tell us that the that every additional degree of warming will make these extreme events much worse unfrequent.

11:01So yeah, as farmers, I think we are facing more and more crisis. Climate change, of course, animal diseases, high energy and fertilizer costs, also unstable prices. So we need to have much more stronger farming policy to help farmers to adapt climate change, to reduce dependence on imported inputs, for example, like fertilizer and make our farm more resilient. We all here in Europe are sort of talking about the weather, surprised about how hot it has become so quickly. Have you been surprised about how the conditions, the weather that you're dealing with are changing so quickly? Did you expect this to happen as fast as it has done?

11:47No, I don't think we expected this really. So a couple of years ago, we had sort of 40, 41 degrees touched during the summer. And then last year was dry. If we keep going the way that we are, sort of three, four, five years time, arable production in the UK will become very, very problematic and will decrease at a rapid rate without extra support in place. In the year 2003 and 2004, I used to stay in France. I was in southern France for those two years. And exactly at that point of time also, there was an equally severe heat wave. And then people spoke about it and then probably forgot about it.

12:26In India, every five, seven years, we get this massive temperature influx. And then people talk about it and then we forget about it because of the other problems that we face. So, yes, we were expecting something like this to hit in. But we were expecting less rainfall. What has happened? This erratic rainfall has surprised us and it has hit us worse. And for me, it was very surprising. We knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to happen so quickly. I think as farmers we can adapt, but climate change is now moving very, very fast and faster than our ability to adapt. I think we need to have more protection to protect farmers and to support small and medium farms in order to have this food security and to feed all the people of the world.

13:18Farmers Matteo, Gerpete and Heather. and as Mateo said, this is the type of summer that scientists have long warned about. As average temperatures rise, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels around the world, summers will keep getting hotter on average as carbon emissions continue to heat up the planet. You're listening to The Documentary with me, Luke Jones.

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15:24For our second conversation, we're going to talk about water, or rather the lack of it, in rivers and lakes. You might have seen some of the videos online of sunken World War II warships uncovered by the receding waters of the River Danube in Serbia, or the remains of an ancient mammoth exposed by low water in Bulgaria. We wanted to hear about the implications of these record low water levels, so we have been speaking to Gugeli, who owns a restaurant and motel in Lake Valence in Hungary, Christian, who is a sustainability manager for a shipping company on the River Rhine, and Austin. He normally makes a living charting fishing boats on the Harris Chain of Lakes in central Florida.

16:08It's a beautiful environment. It's full of cypress trees. The water kind of is tan in some places but crystal clear in others where we have springs. Lily pads everywhere and we used to have people that would take boat tours through our canals. Some of the lakes still have quite a bit of water because they're water controlled but on my end we've lost over four feet and so my boat only takes 18 inches of water but my prop is now sitting in mud so i'm uh i'm out of business at the moment sounds pretty familiar to us so i'm working for a company and that's called contago and we're transporting uh containers on the river with ships they're not those big ships that operate on the ocean but small ones on the river The River Rhine is like one of the most important waterways in Europe.

16:59There's all sorts of stuff on it. There's containers and there's coal and there's even like windmills being transported on it. And you can see everything. And there's like boat passing after boat passing after boat passing. You can really see that it's like a really important waterway for the industry in Germany that we have. And we're actually also kind of out of business. So there are still six ships left this week. They're probably not going to run later than this week because the water level is still declining. And I think so what a lot of people say is that so the water level is always changing.

17:39You know, you always have like high water levels, low water levels. But what you can see during the recent years is that it's getting more and more extreme and the water levels are really that low that we can't really transport containers anymore. As the water level is as low as it's ever been recorded. Gugu, tell us about Lake Valence in Hungary. Lake Valence is located in the middle of Hungary, around the lake. It's about 30 kilometres. It used to be a crowded tourist place during the summer because we are not so far from Biropest, the capital. So lots of people came during the summer to have a swim or something like that.

18:21And during the years, the wildlife is gone, the fish is gone. So it's really sad to see no tourists at all during this summer. And just explain for us, Gugu, why that is, what it has been reduced to. A few years ago, we had some other issues with the lake. A lot of fishes died because of hot weather. And this summer, it's getting even worse because now the government said it's not healthy to go in to have a swim or have a bath in the lake because it's too small nowadays. And a few weeks ago, somebody walked through the lake. So it's that small, the water. Yeah, so it's not good. That's really impressive for me, Gergu, because I actually was there during my holidays and I still remember like this beautiful lake and having you telling me that you can just walk through is really a pity.

19:17Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of German tourists used to come. Yeah. I'm interested in how you're all coping. Gergu, what about you? If you, you know, haven't got a lake for tourists to come and swim in and enjoy, I mean, are they coming at all? I mean, I guess it's not particularly nice to just walk around a dry lake, is it? We are running a restaurant and accommodation with nine rooms. It's a small motor. Our situation is a little bit different because a restaurant and motor is located beside the highway and near to the lake. So we are open all year long and we give a good quality food. So we have gas during the year as well.

20:00But every year we prepare for the summer because summer is the high season when we double our customer's number. But this year we didn't double it. We have the same quantity of guests as in January, so nothing changed. But I planned it like I thought it's going to be because we knew it that the lake is not going to be good during the summertime. So I didn't hire new people. So we try to manage, but I would be much more happier if it would be a good summer with loads of guests in the restaurant. But in that kind of heat, it's 40 Celsius during the summer. People are not coming to eat for lunch because it's too hot.

20:44You and I have both the same temperature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's so difficult to live with it, yeah. Have any of you got an idea about what you might do going forward? Me and other business owners try to think and try to make some organization to get tourists and guests around the lake or to do some gastronomy festivals to come to the Lake Valencia and some wine tasting things and things like that. And it's 30 kilometers around the lake, so it's a good lake for a ride along with the bicycles. We get some hills around with forest so you can do some hiking. so we try to do some locality and help us with these things.

21:26Yeah, I think that's a really good point, you know, to make sure you make the best out of it. That's actually what we also do. So our concept is that we're not just having like one mode of transport, but we rather rely on several modes of transport as when what is not working as it is for the river right now, for example, we can switch to different modes, which isn't like easy nowadays. So there's still a lot of investments and infrastructure we need and so on. But I think it's better to diversify how you're earning your money or in our case, how we're transporting goods. So we can be a lot more resilient as, for example, the rail is also.

22:05So if like trees dry out, they keep falling on the railroads and then the railroads stop. So it's not just like a river issue, but also a rail issue for us. In my area, it's difficult to say, to be honest with you, that we can't really walk close to our waterways because we have alligators in Florida. It's not really safe for us to really walk close to the water, especially when the water is lower, alligators come up more and are more predators. If it continues like this until the end of the year, I might have to look for a different location where the water is higher, which is not something I'm looking forward to because I've been established in the same spot for 10 years at the Haines Creek Getaway, which is an RV park that I run out of.

22:50As a captain, it is actually illegal in the state of Florida for me to run a charter out of a public boat ramp or a residential area due to insurance reasons. So it's difficult for me to find a marina somewhere else that is not just willing to have me there, but also willing to let me run a company out of there. So in the meantime, Austin, I guess I assume with a lot less money coming in, what are you doing? Are you having to tighten your belt? Are you cutting back on things away from business in your personal life? I am down to the bare bones. I've taken a roommate in my house to help me pay the mortgage.

23:30I've completely stepped back from my career for the last 10 years I started mowing yards and I've taken jobs that I haven't done in 10 years because I haven't needed to the tourist industry in Florida we get just in Disney World we get 50 million tourists a year to come to Disney World which is only about 45 minutes from where I am with the water being so low I've turned down 72 charters that's my entire year living summer is actually different for us here summer is actually the highlight it's summer vacation for kids everybody comes to Florida for the beaches and the lakes and Disney World this year is very crippling very very crippling sorry to hear that what is the situation in Florida with you I appreciate that we both succeed soon I don't see in Hungary what is going to be the answer from the government or from the country And I think it's not a one-year problem nowadays here or in the world.

24:34So it's a trend, I think. So it's going to be even much more hot weather year by year. So that's why we have to figure it out something like how can we run the business and to do something good in the area. For us, it's usually most of the water comes from either rainfall or from the glaciers in the mountains. But as the glaciers are all melted by now, we don't have this reliant water source for the river. Wow. Do you guys not have alligators or predators in your waterways? No, no. Not at all. But they died. And no birds. We used to have ducks, wild ducks, but they're gone. So it's sad. And 50 years ago, it was a big hunting lake, the Lake Valencia.

25:22So hunters came for hunting ducks. but it's gone. Austin, I was wondering whether the alligators, they change their way of behavior because they're also reliant on the water, right? And if the water's gone, what do the alligators do? They get more aggressive. There's not enough water for them to hide properly. Thankfully, we have the Florida Everglades down here, which is a massive area of swamp. So we have a very big population of birds and other wildlife that keep them fed. But the problem is we've been seeing an increase of attacks on people and whatnot. Because to be honest with you, a lot of people in Florida are not educated enough on our predators.

26:06So the alligators don't have a lot of room to hide because the water is so low. So they get more aggressive. They come up on shore. And our alligators can get up to about 14 feet here. So it's pretty bad. And in South Florida, we have pythons, bilmese pythons that have invaded our epiglades. So as the water gets lower, these creatures are now moving outside of their normal area to find more food, which then approaches into our area. So if we have water, they can hide better and we don't have to worry about them so much. We still swim out here. We still water ski and do things like that when the water was higher, despite the predators.

26:47Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Rather him than me. That is Austin speaking with Christian in Germany and Gugeli in Hungary. Thanks to them and to all our guests this week. I'm Luke Jones and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.