Dublin: The meadows and moorlands of Ireland inspired Johnny Cash to write his famous song Forty Shades of Green when he visited in 1959.
Dairy farmer Darragh McCullough, looking across his fields on the country’s east coast, sees 40 shades of yellow instead.
After a total absence of rain in July, McCullough worried that the grass on his farm was so dry he would have to budget about €11,000 ($18,000) each week for extra feed for his cows.
Now, with barely any rain expected in August, he thinks the cost will rise to €14,000 in terms of the feed required from his stores and elsewhere.
“We’ve always had lots of rainfall,” he says of Ireland.
“You know, we’re the most westerly part of Europe, stuck out like a little piece of rock in the Atlantic Ocean, and we’re the first to get the weather fronts when they come in.
“So the topic of conversation now is: how can Ireland be suffering from a water shortage? How is that possible?”
The Irish are not alone in confronting the extreme conditions of this northern summer. Heatwaves have scorched most parts of Europe. Great rivers have fallen to record lows. Wildfires have driven thousands from their homes. Scientists are estimating the death toll from the heat.
The impact on farmers is likely to flow through to households across the continent, and possibly beyond. In Britain, food producers expect smaller vegetable crops and higher prices for consumers. In Austria, the grain harvest is likely to be down by about 20 per cent. In France, the corn harvest is forecast to be the lowest in four decades.
McCullough, 49, gave up a career in journalism to return to the family farm in County Meath, about an hour north of Dublin.
He runs 540 cows but is not wholly dependent on dairy to make the farm viable: he and his wife, Aoife, diversified into flowers and now produce 12 million daffodils every spring. They have a cafe and host two food trucks, one of them set up by a Thai worker who was staying on the farm. And they know how to innovate: they have a vending machine that sells farm fresh eggs.
‘If there’s a drought in Ireland, it can only be worse in the UK and even worse in Europe.’
Dairy farmer Darragh McCullough
For all of that, however, the future still depends on the quality of the land. McCullough has to guard against more heatwaves as the climate changes.
“What has happened since 2018 is that we’ve had almost annual mini-droughts, certainly in the eastern parts of the country,” he says in an interview.
“So the worst parts of the east have a soil moisture deficit of over 90 millimetres. In water terms, it would take 900,000 litres of water per hectare to restore that soil back to a level that can eliminate that deficit.”
The west coast of Ireland, famous for being drenched by storms, is still getting some rain. The east, however, is bone dry. Met Eireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, says last month was the country’s driest July on record. It was also the hottest since 1900.
Teagasc, the country’s agriculture and food authority, estimates the costs to dairy farmers have risen to about €3 million per day nationwide. The government is urging farmers to conduct a “fodder budget” to plan the feed they will need in the months ahead, and it has called an emergency meeting of its national fodder and food security committee to be held on Tuesday.
All of this means higher prices for consumers, says McCullough.
“This is the harsh reality of climate change,” he says.
“I think people have felt slightly insulated, certainly in the Western world, from the worst vagaries of climate change.
“Over time, food has been getting steadily cheaper, relatively speaking, and we found lots of other ways to spend our money
“I think that people need to see the big picture on this. Food will still be quite affordable, in the long historical view. But food is also likely to become more expensive because of less predictable weather patterns and more challenging growing conditions.”
Farm groups across Europe are already warning of higher prices, although the short-term impact is a matter of conjecture.
British consumers were told in February that the energy shock from the Iran war would push up food prices by as much as 10 per cent, but this did not happen. Reuters reported that UK food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose 1.7 per cent in the 12 months to June.
The bigger question is whether farmers can adjust to more intense summers when scientists are forecasting more conditions like this over the long term as a result of climate change.
McCullough says this is about adjusting, not panicking. “We’re still going to be milking cows next year and the year after, and for a long time in the future, please God,” he says.
“And, yes, we’ll have to do more routine buffer feeding during routine summer droughts, and that definitely increases the cost of our production system. But it doesn’t make our dairy system completely unviable.”
Irish farmers already feel under pressure – and a European Union trade deal with Australia is one of the reasons. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sealed the pact with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in March, with terms that include allowing 30,000 tonnes of beef and 27,000 tonnes of sheep meat from Australia into the EU over the next decade. Australian farmers thought that was too limited.
And the broader outlook is not promising. The Irish economy is forecast to contract by 1.2 per cent this year, reflecting the country’s reliance on a few big industries like pharmaceutical production. GDP growth was unusually large last year, at 12.3 per cent, because medicine companies brought forward large volumes of exports to get ahead of tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
For farmers, the harder times in Ireland are connected to the impact of this summer on the rest of Europe. Buying feed from the UK or the continent, for instance, is not easy when every country is suffering from the dry conditions.
“If there’s a drought in Ireland, it can only be worse in the UK and even worse in Europe,” says McCullough.
“And so, if it’s getting more expensive to produce dairy in Ireland, it’s definitely getting more expensive to produce it elsewhere. It will probably bake in the higher prices.”
Europe is yet to feel the full impact from this summer, but all the signs point to slower growth and higher prices. After a series of unusually hot conditions, it is natural to worry about drought becoming more common.
McCullough and his wife now have a daughter, Grace, who is 17 months old. Whether she runs the farm, he says, will be up to her. But he is confident the farm will continue despite the tougher conditions.
“There’s always been challenges, whether it’s weather or prices or systems or technology,” he says. “But I don’t despair about the future.”
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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