Drought predictions spark crop failure fear - Local

Sponsored by

Drought predictions spark crop failure fear

Published on 02/01/2012 13:18

FARMERS in the Horncastle area are faced with a high fisk of their crops failing as forecasts by the Environment Agency predict a high risk of drought for 2012.

There are fears the ground will be too dry to grow crops following an exceptionally dry spring and summer.

Lincolnshire is still officially in drought and the Environment Agency has had restrictions in place, preventing farmers taking water from rivers, due to the existing low levels.

Steve Ireland, of Poolham Farm, Horncastle, said many farmers rely on river water to fill their winter storage reservoirs - used to irrigate crops.

He said: “Usually your license would begin around January and February, allowing you fill your reservoirs from the rivers.

“But because there are not sufficient levels in the rivers, farmers will not be able to do this.”

Mr Ireland said the annual rainfall has been around 16 and a half inches.

This is approximately 10 inches less than normal.

He explained: “The rain we are getting at the moment means that there are puddles everywhere, but the land isn’t at capacity.

“We would need two to three months of rain to get it back to the levels needed.

“Below ground it is bone dry and crops rely on that deep water to take them through the summer months.

“This is a massive area for crops such as leeks and parsnips.

“The worst scenario would be if the drought continued into next year.

“If the first six months are below average rainfall then it will be an extremely serious situation.”

If there is a dry winter and a high demand for water during the spring, Anglian Water might have to introduce customer restrictions.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Get your Horncastle News for just 56p

Sponsored by
Drought predictions spark crop failure fear

Top stories

News