From frostbitten almonds in Spain to heat-stunted tomatoes in the Basque Country and shrivelled Halloween pumpkins in Germany, Europe's farmers have endured a brutal year. The continent's grain harvest is forecast to fall by 16.7 million tonnes, a shortfall worth more than €3 billion, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). The hot, dry summer that caused much of the damage would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change.
"After this summer, many European farmers are on the brink," says Josefine Herz, managing director of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA). "One year prices collapse because they grew too much; the next, drought punishes them for growing at all, and each swing hands a bigger share to the same few processors and retailers who are increasing prices on the consumer side."
French vegetable growers' association Légumes de France warned in July that losses in some sectors could reach 50 per cent. Meanwhile, disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, triggered by the war on Iran, have pushed up fuel and fertiliser costs, and drought has restricted cargo traffic on European waterways. These supply-chain pressures are compounding worries about the cost of farming and the security of food supplies.
Diversification as a buffer against extremes
At Curly Creek Ranch in Spain's Basque Country, tomatoes – a top earner at €7/kg – stopped flowering in the extreme heat. "Imagine the length of the tomato plant and the middle third has a gap without fruit. We never saw that before," says farmer Meghan Sapp, who is also EARA's external relations director. Flowering has since resumed, and she hopes a later-than-usual season will make up some of the shortfall. The farm's Halloween pumpkins are smaller than usual, and corn showed "early signs of burning on the leaves, which we'd never seen before".
The heat also exposed weaknesses in the local water supply, including leaky infrastructure: Curly Creek Ranch repeatedly received less than its expected daily allocation, forcing authorities to deliver 50,000 litres by tanker. But diversification has helped spread the risk. "Many years we don't get a single aubergine due to lack of heat and yet we plant them anyway, just in case," Meghan explains. "This year that bet paid off… for the first time ever we had a huge crop."
Further south, in Murcia, Yanniek Schoonhoven of La Junquera farm has also shifted away from cereals. "We have gradually diversified… looking for systems that are better suited to an increasingly unpredictable climate," he says. Aromatic plants like rosemary, lavender, sage and oregano thrive in dry Mediterranean conditions and fetch around €2,000 per hectare against costs of about €1,000. Pistachios, also drought-tolerant, bring in even more: around €2,350 per hectare with similar costs. But frost during a critical period wiped out La Junquera's almonds, a "very significant loss" of around €700–€1,050 per hectare.
The limits of switching crops
Despite the attractive margins on certain drought-resilient crops, it's not a simple switch. While aromatics can be distilled into essential oils, a higher-value product than grain, "these markets require processing, investment and reliable buyers", explains Yanniek. Cereals and oilseeds, by contrast, are commodity crops: standardised products sold in bulk, with prices largely dictated by wider markets. Farmers may have established buyers, but little leverage to charge more for climate resilience. At La Junquera, wheat brings in around €600 per hectare against roughly €500 in costs.
Subsidies tend to favour these crops, though. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) pays basic income support by hectares farmed, not by crop type or output, so more funding naturally flows to large-scale farms which often grow commodities. The EU also steps in if market prices for commodity crops fall below a certain threshold. Yet commodities are not immune to extreme weather. On Gut Weimarschmieden, a 700-hectare organic conservation farm in Fladungen, Germany, summer barley and winter wheat struggled in the heat, says manager Maximillian Krimm, while the cornfields produced about 17 tonnes instead of the usual 25 to 30.
Spelt and canola fared better. Maximillian is also considering emmer, an old wheat variety whose yields are 20 to 30 per cent lower than conventional wheat, for only a slightly higher price. "In general we don't grow much that's lower value because the prices don't justify it," he says.
Soil health as the foundation
Commodity farming also favours intensive methods that deplete soil and generate emissions, not least from synthetic fertiliser – and crop choice alone won't fix that. "A drought-tolerant crop planted into dead, compacted soil in a biodiversity dead zone will still struggle, because there's nothing to hold water or nutrients," says Herz. Restoring soil health through regenerative practices – cover cropping, reduced tillage, and integrating livestock – can improve water retention and resilience, reducing the need for costly inputs.
Farmers across Europe are already experimenting. In the Netherlands, some are turning to rice as peatlands sink and the climate warms, a sign of how adaptation is taking root in unexpected places. The challenge is scaling these approaches. EARA and other groups are calling for CAP reform that pays for outcomes – such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and water management – rather than simply per hectare. "We need subsidies that reward farmers for delivering public goods, not just for owning land," says Herz.
As extreme weather becomes the norm, the choice is stark: continue with a system that leaves farmers exposed, or build a more resilient agriculture that can feed Europe through the coming decades. The farmers already adapting show that a different path is possible – but they need policy to catch up.
