An olive grove is watered through irrigation pipes from a container in the village of Nea Silata in northern Greece.
| Photo Credit: AP
Six weeks before harvest, there is no water left in the ground for farmer Dimitris Papadakis’s olive grove in northern Greece, so he has started a new morning routine.
Joined by his teenage son, he uses a truck to bring water from nearby areas. Using a small generator, he connects the vehicle to irrigation pipes to save what is left of his thirsty crop.
“Our boreholes have almost dried up … We now depend on tankers to irrigate our fields,” says Mr. Papadakis, who heads an agricultural cooperative in a village in Halkidiki, a three-fingered peninsula in northern Greece which is popular with tourists.
This summer, southern Europe has been hammered by successive heat waves, following on from below-average rainfall for up to three years. Drought spots on the map of the region have expanded. In Greece, the effects include water shortages, dried-up lakes, and even the death of wild horses. “We’ve seen a 30-40% reduction in water supply following three consecutive winters with almost no rainfall,” said local Mayor Anastasia Halkia.
The groundwater beneath Mr. Papadakis’s 270 olive trees is dwindling and becoming brackish, with the drought expected to cut his expected yield in half.
The water crisis has been exacerbated by a booming tourist season. In Kassandra, the westernmost finger of the peninsula, the year-round population of 17,000 swells to 6,50,000 in the summer, placing unsustainable pressure on water resources.
