Due to the unusually warm weather, the harvest of wheat and barley will start a month earlier this year. Farmers in southern Bulgaria, however, also expect a lower harvest, with which it will be difficult to cover the costs already incurred.
Due to the prolonged drought and record high temperatures in March and April, wheat and barley developed significantly faster. “This is barley that has matured, it will ripen in 20 days, this is the so-called temperature stress. Their green mass is dehydrated, which slows down photosynthesis, slows down all life processes, the forecast is for lower yields,” he said in front of BNT Prof. Dr. Ivan Yanchev from Agrarian University Plovdiv.
In the land of the city of Saedinenie, Angel Vukodinov also sees the effects of climate change on his production. And he is already trying to calculate the losses that await him. “The harvest is a maximum of 50% of what is usual. In recent years, we have learned to constantly count losses because of geopolitics. It is very difficult at the moment to count, but we cannot expect a good harvest,” adds grain producer Angel Vukodinov.
From each acre, grain producers will have at least 150 kilograms of lower yields. They are preparing for an earlier harvest and expect to see how the warm and dry weather will affect the quality of the produce. “Sometimes the reverse anomaly also occurs. With lower yields, the quality is higher, so there will probably be some quality, but if the yield is 2-3 times lower, the colleagues will have no way to survive,” says Vukodinov.
With declining yields and rising costs, the end consumer will also feel the price hike, farmers believe.
