Low rainfall threatens Negev wheat and Golan cattle ranchers

Agriculture is suffering due to the exceptionally long dry spell this winter, with western Negev wheat farmers and Golan Heights cattle ranchers among those hurt by what could potentially be deemed a drought.

There has been no rain for four weeks in many areas, and five weeks in some places. The cumulative rainfall since the rainy season began, in October, is also below average.

According to Meteorological Service climatologist Amos Porat, the average precipitation this winter is between 30 and 75 percent of the average at this date in previous years.

It has been over a decade since so many consecutive days without rain were recorded in several locations, including Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Be'er Sheva.

"At present the situation is defined as 'rain stoppage,'" an Agriculture Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

An official drought, which entitles farmers to monetary compensation and increased water quotas, is declared only after the end of the rainy season. The spokeswoman pointed out that the country's farmers are insured for damages resulting from a lack of rain.

While Porat noted that overall rainfall levels could recover, his colleague, Mark Perl, pointed out that even if the rain "deficit" is covered later in the season, the extended period of no rainfall has already caused damage.

"The main problem is the wheat," said Perl, an agricultural meteorologist with the Meteorological Service.

Most of the country's wheat is grown in the northwestern Negev. Wheat is usually not irrigated: it is sown when the ground is wet, and germinates when the rains fall. "Since there's been no rain for a month already, the young shoots are dying, which means the fields will have to be sown again," said Perl.

Water Commissioner Prof. Uri Shani said on Tuesday at the Eighth Annual Conference of the Israel Desalination Society at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, that the low rainfall will force a reduction in irrigation quotas.

He said desalination is the best solution to the water shortage in Israel and the region. "Thanks to the desalination plant in Ashkelon, which is performing excellently, we are expecting a less serious catastrophe," Shani said.

According to Itamar Nitzan, a meteorologist at the private weather forecasting agency Meteo Tech, the winter has not yet begun. Meteo Tech defines the start of winter as December 21. "We are used to seeing more rain in November-December, but in October the rainfall was nearly twice the average," he said.

Nitzan attributed the situation to worldwide climate trends. In Moscow, for example, the temperature recently reached 7 Celsius - the highest recorded for this time of year in decades. Many ski slopes in Europe are still bare.

For some, the spring-like weather is a bonanza. At Sport Yami, a boat rental business in Tiberias, employees urged the many families strolling along the Lake Kinneret boardwalk in the sunshine earlier this week to go boating.

Cattle ranchers in the Golan Heights are less sanguine about the sunny situation. They have been watching their grazing pastures slowly turn yellow. Some ranchers have already begun feeding their herds. "The implication of feeding the cattle is very bad for us," Haim Dayan, chair of the Israel Beef Cattle Breeders' Association, explained. "The price of feed has climbed steeply over the past several years, and having to feed the cattle this early in the season will completely erode the breeders' profits."

"Grass is much better than commercial feed. It's much healthier, there is simply no disease," Dayan said. He explained that well-distributed rains, rather than large quantities of precipitation, are the key to good pasture. "Meanwhile, I've turned to some of the guys who have a better connection with God. I think they're trying," Dayan said.

Shlomo Haddad of Safed thinks the time has come to put an effort into encouraging the rain. "According to the Talmud, if by the middle of Kislev the rains have not come, a period of fasting and prayer must be declared," he said. "For some reason there seems to be apathy; usually in this situation gatherings at the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai at Meron and at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, are held."