France’s agriculture ministry says the maize harvest will fall 35% on 2025 levels to about 9m tonnes, a quantity last seen in 1980, as successive heatwaves and a continent-wide drought batter Europe’s farms and expose how little protection the rural economy gets when the weather turns against capital’s favourite abstractions.
Fields Burn, Budgets Follow
French vegetable production is down by “a very significant extent” compared with previous years, with shortfalls of 25% for courgettes, 35% for lettuces, 40% for peas, 60% for broccoli and 50% to 100% for artichokes. Prince de Bretagne, which groups together more than 1,300 vegetable producers in Brittany, called for “urgent action” to address a “dramatic” fall in yields and in the quality of many crops. Eric Legras of the 4,400-member French canned and frozen vegetable producers’ association said, “Usually one region fares better, which helps compensate. This year, all our main production areas have been hit, and at the same time.”
That’s the system’s neat little trick undone by heat. The usual patchwork of regional losses no longer cushions the blow, because the heatwaves have hit everywhere at once. Accelerated, human-caused global heating and a supersized El Niño have scorched fields across Europe this summer, with plant development prevented by temperatures routinely exceeding 30C and often 35C, almost no rainfall and hot winds. The French agriculture ministry said part of the maize fall comes from farmers switching to other crops such as sunflowers, but the heatwaves also battered maize during critical stages of growth.
Livestock Takes the Hit
The damage doesn’t stop at harvests. Dairy cows typically start to suffer from heat stress above 25C, and many producers have already reported milk yields down by 10% to 15%. Agreste, the agriculture ministry’s statistics service, said last week that production of hay for winter cattle forage was running about 30% lower than the 1989-2018 average, a shortfall that “is worsening and is now affecting a growing numbers of regions”. Egg production has also been hit by a catastrophic mortality rate in poultry houses, particularly during the June heatwave, and France’s national egg promotion board said output is about 1m eggs a day lower than the norm.
Italy is facing the same grinding pressure. About 60% of farmland is now affected by drought ranging from mild to severe, according to data published earlier this month by Coldiretti, the country’s largest farmers’ organisation. Crop yields, especially for corn, rice and soya beans as well as vegetables and fruit, have been badly hit, milk production has fallen by 20%, and the overall cost to the sector, including damage caused by wildfires and heavy storms, is put at more than €3bn.
The drought is especially acute in the Po valley, a huge geographical area straddling four northern regions, the backbone of Italian agriculture and home to about 80% of Italian rice production, because of severe depletion of the country’s longest river. Italy is Europe’s largest rice producer, with about 235,000 hectares planted in 2025. This year, the severe drought has forced growers to irrigate crops only on alternate weeks. Even the water schedule has become rationed by scarcity.
Spain’s Harvests, Spain’s Warning
Spain’s cereal harvests are 35% below the previous year in Castilla y León, 49% in the Madrid region and 24% in Andalucía. Sheep and goat’s milk production is down 6.5% and 10.8% respectively. After a disastrous harvest in drought-stricken 2024, olive oil production increased significantly last year and the wet winter and spring were good news for a crop not harvested until late autumn, but growers say it is too early to say how this year will look. Spain’s national wine federation has predicted a 20% fall in production for 2026, and its director, José Luis Benítez, warned that successive heatwaves will reduce crops as grapes are smaller for lack of moisture.
The response from above is the usual one: money, later, and only after the damage is done. Governments have pledged costly aid packages. The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has promised €145m in immediate aid, along with “structural support and investment measures” in the 2027 budget. The figures are large enough for a press release and small enough to underline the scale of the wreckage. The farms are already scorched, the yields already gone, and the state arrives with a cheque and a timetable.
What’s left is the familiar European ritual. Brussels talks climate, capitals talk resilience, ministries count losses, and producers keep reporting the same thing: heat, drought, lower yields, dead livestock, damaged crops. The continent’s food system is being forced to answer a question it has spent years avoiding. What happens when the weather stops cooperating with the market?