About twenty kilometers south of Angers (Maine-et-Loire), along the departmental road which sinks into the lands of Anjou, the blades of grass on the edges of the road are short. Not that they’ve been mowed recently, but the spring sun has already scorched a lot of them. The wheat of Denis Asseray, a 57-year-old farmer from Angevin, is having just as much trouble prospering.
At the very end of a sand and gravel road, the Domaine de La Bruyère, located in the commune of Gennes-Val-de-Loire, extends over 220 hectares of vines and cereals – from wheat and corn to equal parts. In the shade of the barn housing about fifty dairy cows, an imposing blue reel, at the end of which a cannon throws water in a fine rain, ends its watering tour.
“This is the first year that I have been watering my wheat”, explains the farmer, installed since 1990. The ears are still short, barely formed, and some are already turning white, a sign of intense drought. Further, squares of ground are even so dry that they are “already blue”. Located at the edge of the plot or on non-irrigable parts of land, not all benefit from artificial watering. “Here, the grain is not even fertilized”, explains the operator, crumbling a whitish ear. The current lack of water is all the more problematic as the development of wheat reaches, at this time of year, its crucial phase of grain growth, which requires a significant water supply.
Since the beginning of January, a little less than 135 millimeters of precipitation have been recorded over the whole of the department, against 250 millimeters on average. And since the beginning of April, less than 45 millimeters, instead of 80, according to figures from Météo-France. The high temperatures of recent days, occasionally flirting with 25°C, have not helped. In mid-May, the drought reached Maine-et-Loire, like what is happening in part of France.
“Sprinkle all you can”
Denis Asseray does not “remember[t] not of such a dry spring so soon ». The period from January to April is indeed the driest recorded in the department since 1991, confirms Lionel Salvayre, territorial referent of Météo-France in the Pays de la Loire region. In previous years, these heat waves only occurred in the department just before summer, at the end of May or the beginning of June.
Some five kilometers further west, in Brissac-Loire-Aubance, the cultures of Thierry Chaillou, 56, are also suffering. At the heart of his 460-hectare farm, the soil from his corn plots slips through his fingers like sand. But the situation is less problematic than for wheat, he explains, because the maize has just been sown and still has enough time to make up for its lack of water.
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