Farmers worried – plants in full bloom: trembling for ‘normal weather’

Last year, the apricot farmers in the Wachau complained of an almost total failure – the reason for this was the already feared late frost. And this year too, the omens for a harvest look quite bleak.

Compared to the long-term temperature average (period from 1962 to 1991), some plants are up to a month and a half earlier than normal. While some people are finding the current temperatures quite pleasant, farmers are starting to shiver.

Plants in particularly sensitive phases
“If severe frost occurs in the next three months (until May), all already growing plant parts, which often lose their frost resistance due to the activation of annual growth, are at particular risk,” explains agricultural meteorologist and climate change researcher Josef out. Eitzinger to Krone.at. In this case, a longer period of frost would be particularly fatal.

According to the expert from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), it would be extremely difficult if the cold coincided with a particularly sensitive phase in plant development. This mainly concerns the flowering phase of fruit trees, the post-flowering phase in which the fruit bodies are still very small, but also the formation of young shoots in wine and arable crops (for example potatoes, kukuruz or vegetables).

Is there no late frost? Hope is small
The hope of many farmers now lies in the fact that the erratic weather caused by climate change will continue into the spring and that crops will be spared from the unusually mild weather. A corresponding forecast depends greatly on weather conditions, which are difficult to predict. Eitzinger does not want to raise false hopes: “The risk of late frost in the coming months is certainly present.”

Last year there was already a clear downside in the fruit harvest:

Measures expensive and moderately successful
If the feared frost is actually around the corner, all that remains are the well-known frost protection measures, such as covering the plants, anti-freeze irrigation, heating methods (petroleum candles, burning barrels) or using means to delay germination. (mainly used in viticulture). However, these methods are quite expensive and often only work well if night frost lasts for a short time, Eitzinger continues.

So farmers should continue to worry – and keep a close eye on the weather forecasts. But may we eventually have to switch to other cultures in this country? In any case, the expert recommends avoiding cultivation in frost-sensitive locations where cold air lakes arise, using frost-resistant varieties and not starting cultivation too early.

Does Marille & Co. still a future with us?
In principle, it is “predictable that frost temperatures will decrease and winters will become increasingly warmer,” Eitzinger explains to krone.at. One of the biggest problems will probably be that plants (just like this year) lose their winter hardiness too early. There is also a trend for the last late frost to move forward in spring, but since the plants germinate in the period when the days are even shorter – and therefore the chance of lower temperatures increases – the chance of frost is not necessarily the same . .

Frost alone is not the biggest problem
Frost alone will not be the biggest problem for farmers in the future anyway. Although the growing season for annual crops is extended due to the general increase in temperatures, at the same time significantly more insects arrive in winter, which can have harmful consequences – new heat-loving plants and insects also establish themselves, which remains a challenge.

But the extension of the growing season causes additional problems that have already become clear in recent years: enormous drought and increasingly heavy rainfall. The effects of climate change are ‘complex and diverse’, Eitzinger summarizes. In any case, this means that farmers will have to do a lot of work and probably even more uncertainty.