Early summer 'driest in decades'

While last year's devastating floods are on the country's mind one year on, the country's farmers and vintners are suffering from a prolonged drought in 2022.

Christian Zimmer, fa armer in Tuntange, says both quality and quantity in the fields have been impacted. Grasslands have stopped growing completely. In normal years, they are cut up to four times, but this year, there has been no more growth after the second. He expects the harvest will be down to half. "We will have to fall back on last year's reserves, where we were lucky enough to build some up."

In terms of vegetable growing, it is nearly impossible to produce anything. "You can't water your lettuce with rain water if there is none. We aren't allowed to use ground water, which means we would have to use mains water, and that's simply not sustainable in terms of cost."

Vineyards, too, are starting to show damage. Ern Schumacher, viticulturist in Wormeldange, confirms: "You can see it in the younger vines, which are two or three years old and whose roots don't reach so deeply into the ground. If it stays this dry for another fortnight, there will be other vineyards which don't have so much soil. They will also dry out and suffer greater damage."

The dry weather can be partly compensated through water, but the grapes will turn out smaller. Viticulturists continue to hope for rain and for temperatures to stay below 40 degrees, to avoid the vines getting burnt from the sun, too, as they were two years ago.